


An Odd Hypothetical Question

by MargaeryMargarine



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Behind the scenes plot, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Romance, S.H.I.E.L.D hides a lot of things better left unknown, Trust
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-01-21 00:18:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 29,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1530992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MargaeryMargarine/pseuds/MargaeryMargarine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stark had no clue what he had ignited with his question. Natasha had no clue what she had set on fire when she answered. Clint had no clue, but he had a ready armful of kindling. Yet in the end it was S.H.I.E.L.D, who had nothing for them, that decided the young flame's survival. Natasha's POV from IM2 to The Avengers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue/Chapter 1

 

 

 

**Prologue**

The knife almost grazed her cheek. Nevertheless she caught it, flipped it to her other hand, and sent it thudding into target board, the motions faster and more fluid in an attempt to hide her slip.

"I saw that." On the other side of the training room, Clint stopped extracting the knives from the board for her. "You alright?"

"I guess." Natasha tossed her remaining blades. When her hands emptied she clapped them once in front her so he would resume their circuit.

"Tell me first. You got a personal grudge against Tony Stark or something?"

"No more than you do, which is a slight prejudice due to media brainwashing."

"Oh, that's not brainwashing. That's just Stark being Stark."

"Maybe that's what they want you to believe." Natasha beckoned with her hands. "I answered your question. C'mon."

Clint chucked a knife to her. She caught it—this time with practiced ease—and nailed another bullseye. Then another. And another. Before long Clint was complaining for his turn, but she made for the door instead of the seat beside the target that he had sat in for the last hour. He groaned and caught up to her, out of the room.

"Did Coulson even tell you why you're doing this personal assistant thing? This is Level Four work," Clint said.

"So?" Natasha shrugged. "You know what he's gonna say every time for everything. It's just another assignment." Over the years at S.H.I.E.L.D the routine briefing, insertion, extraction, debriefing cycle had worn out what curiosity she held for her missions, for needing more information than what concerned her success rates.

"I can't recall you ever getting vacation." Natasha nudged him playfully as they walked the corridors. "Shouldn't you be happy?"

"Shouldn't you be googling 'Avengers Initiative'?"

"I did. It's called 'reading my brief.'"

"Yeah? And you're telling me the idea of Fury collecting exotic soldiers like they're Pokémons doesn't intrigued you at all?"

It did. It did intrigue her. Even roused some suspicion in her passiveness of S.H.I.E.L.D. But if she thought too much she'd stumble on the track, the treadmill she had so steadily worked on for the past four years. That was exactly what happened.

 

* * *

**Chapter 1**

The woman's sight had fixed on Natasha long before she rounded that last revealing bend of the road, sharper than the sudden light that penetrated the thick, though thinning treetops she had meandered her car under. Impressive. Potts was a human surveillance camera as well as Stark Industries' CEO. But then what difference existed between the two?

No lines on the ground to map out a parking lot. No garage in sight, either. The engine buzzed restless complaints that gnawed her patience the way Malibu's heat had nibbled its teeth into the skin on her arms. Natasha tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. Potts, half-visible behind a sun-bathed glass wall, stood with arms crossed, still as the windless air. She could have at least pointed or waved a parking instruction to Natasha the same way being so close to a cliff overlooking the Pacific should have granted at least a drizzle of a breeze. But this was Pepper Potts. This was Stark Mansion.

Natasha swung the car in one clean curve in front of the stairs leading to the entrance. A twist of the keys; engine's off. She hoisted her handbag over a shoulder and climbed out the car. Her high heels clicked a staccato against the asphalt, then the stairs. Potts smiled. Natasha smiled back.

The doors slid apart and unleashed upon her a wave of air-conditioned breeze, like ice on a wound to her reddened skin. Potts' smile widened. Her perfectly symmetric stance wavered as she extracted a hand from their crossed position for a handshake. "Ms. Rushman, hi."Her hand was cool, her grip firm but fleeting; she had better things to do than to stand around shaking people's hands.

"Ms. Potts, my pleasure," Natasha said. "And just Natalie's fine."

"Oh, great. I'll give you a brief tour of the place, then we'll get to the paperwork."

Potts set a brisk pace. Ten-word descriptions of the rooms they flashed by resonated through the otherwise silent mansion. Guest room. Bar. Living room number one. Storage kitchen bathroom. Office closet labs. Living room number two. Natasha smiled and nodded dutifully when appropriate; Potts didn't know she had already memorized the building's layout down to its plumbing systems.

Their journey ended in a well-lit office room that faced the ocean and held the fading scent of coffee and air freshener. "This used to be mine a few days ago." Potts knocked the edge of a stack of papers against the desk to straighten them. "I cleared it out, but the business things are still all here. Would you like me to point them out for you?"

"I can manage, but thank you."

"Let's get the transfer issues over with first. I expect you'll be ok with the paperwork?"

"Yes."

"Splendid. I'll announce your arrival to Mr. Stark. We'll be in the gym, just bring the papers when you've filled them out. Other tasks for the day are in a file on the computer desktop." Potts smiled again and turned to leave. Halfway out the door she spun around. "Oh, if you need anything to eat or drink, kitchen's at your disposal."

Natasha settled into a swivel chair before the desk. The packet of papers to legalize Potts' as Stark's CEO sat waiting for her, ready for the black ink she penned on the cream-colored sheets, for the three-pronged binder she snapped them into when she had finished. She turned on the sound amplifier in her ear and headed for the room Potts had instructed her to go.

A trickle of swears and shouts broke the silence of the mansion, out of place and context. From the chaos of noise Potts' shrill voice rose. "The notary's here! Can you _please_ come sign the transfer paperwork?" The seamlessly packaged professionalism in her tone had reduced to something tired and threadbare that scarce shrouded her underlying irritation.

"I'm on Happy's count," a male voice shot back. Stark. The thud of punches didn't pause for his reply. Seconds later a high-pitched grunt joined the brawl.

"Sorry," Stark said.

"What the hell was that?" Another male voice slashed out.

"It's called mixed martial arts," Stark defended. "It's been around for three... weeks-"

"It's called dirty boxing, there's nothing new about it!"

Natasha frowned. The quiescence around here had pampered her expectations for this assignment. She resumed her walk and rounded the last corner that brought her into view.

Various weights and other sports equipment scattered around the room. A small boxing ring claimed the center, on top of which bounced, in a snug black hoodie, the famous Tony Stark. Another man faced him, his stocky frame bloated by the protective padding on his chest. That must be Stark's bodyguard, Happy Hogan.

The bodyguard's glower on Stark slackened upon noticing Natasha. Stark caught on and turned. The confusion on his face provided more than enough evidence that he hadn't heard a word Potts said to him. Who knew, maybe he'd forgotten that he had a new personal assistant coming in at all. Natasha adjusted the binder balancing on her hip and walked to the other end of the room.

"I promise you, this is the only time I will ask you to sign over your company," Potts strained. Her stance reverted to business as she focused on Natasha.

"I need you to initial each box," Natasha said, offering her a pen and the binder. While Potts scribbled away she looked to the men. Stark had knocked Hogan into a corner of the ring and unleashed a round of punches to top it off. Then his stare snapped back to her.

"What's your name, lady?" He asked, pointing at her.

"Rushman, Natalie Rushman," Natasha replied. Did he even look over her employment papers?

"Front n' center, come into the church." He waved his outreached hand towards the ring.

Potts cut in. "No, you're seriously not gonna-"

"If it pleases the Court, which it does."

"It's no problem," Natasha said to Potts and walked to the ring. What couldn't she handle? These people didn't know her full potential, and though she couldn't break Natalie's character with anything suspicious and professional, self-defense would get her through Stark and Hogan without effort.

"I'm sorry, he's very... eccentric," Potts apologized.

Natasha stepped out of her heels and onto the ring. Stark parted the ropes for her, a water bottle dangling by the mouthpiece between his teeth. His eyes glued to the soft blue foam underfoot. When he did look up and meet her gaze he did so with a raise of the bottle to his lips so that it obscured half his face from her view. His jaw and throat didn't move the way they should have if he had indeed swallowed any of the green liquid. Natasha raised an eyebrow.

Stark took the bottle from his mouth. "What?" He asked.

The corners of her lips twitched up.

His eyes dropped in an instant, and he smiled like a shy schoolboy before stealing another glance at her. "Can you give her a lesson?" He told Hogan and clambered out of the ring to join Potts.

"No problem." Hogan lumbered to her, his weight shaking the entire boxing ring. A sour stink invaded her nose as he stationed himself in front of her; a damp triangle of sweat darkened the front of his gray shirt. He looked more than happy to oil his eyes over Natasha. More interested in Stark and Potts than the dirty attention that poked and prodded her body, Natasha kept Hogan busy with one syllable answers to his questions while she focused on eavesdropping on the conversation starting a few yards away.

"Who is she?" Stark asked.

"She is from legal," Potts explained. "And she is potentially a very expensive _sexual harassment lawsuit_ if you keep ogling her like that."

"I need an assistant boxer. I need an assistant." Stark defended.

"Yes, and I have three excellent potential candidates that are lined up and ready to beat you."

"I don't have time to meet them. I need someone now, I feel like it's her."

"No it's not."

Their conversation dropped at that, so Natasha started to pay attention to what Hogan was saying.

"So, what do you like to do?" He asked.

"Uh... martial arts, gymnastics, you know, like-"

"Cool." He interrupted. "You ever boxed before?"

"I have, yes." She smiled.

"What, like Tae Bo? Booty Boot Camp? Crunch? Something like that?" His face contorted into an arrogant smirk.

Natasha cleared her throat. "Booty Boot Camp is not a-"

"How do I spell your name, Natalie?" Stark asked from behind her.

"R-U-S-H-M-A-N." She spelled for him.

His fingers tapped and darted over the coffee table by his side, which turned out to double as a search screen.

"What, are you gonna _google_ her now?" Potts grounded out.

"Hmm? I thought I was ogling her-Oh, _wow_." A hint of surprise carried in his voice. "Very, _very_ impressive individual..."

"You're so predictable, you know that?" Potts muttered.

Stark ignored her. "She's fluent in French, Italian, Russian, Latin... Who speaks Latin?"

"No one speaks Latin, it's a dead language. You can read Latin or you can write Latin but you can't speak Latin so-" she was interrupted again as he breathed out a " _dang_." Natasha caught onto what he was staring at.

Who sneaked one of her old photo shoots into her alias' file?

Stark was going to say something stupid.

Wait for it.

"Did you model in Tokyo? Cause she modeled in Tokyo."

...

"No," came Potts' cold reply.

"I need her, she's got everything that I need." Stark continued to push the limits.

The air behind Natasha shifted. Instincts reacted before reason and she wrenched the fist Hogan flew her way. Using the limb as leverage she flipped off the ground and latched her legs around his neck. He slammed to the ground. The irritation and intolerance that the behavior in this room had built in her exploded, and it wasn't until Hogan's strangled grunts reached her ears that something clicked inside her, and she scrambled and kicked from the man she had charged on impulse. Too late. Her attack was in plain view for all to see.

"Oh my God!" Potts jumped off her seat. "Happy!"

Stark sped in front of her and pointed at Natasha. "That's what I'm talkin' about."

"Just a slip." Hogan stumbled up.

"You did? Looks like a TKO to me." Stark grinned.

Bad. This was bad. This couldn't be the kind of image she's building on her first day of work. Natasha fetched her binder and attempted to get back to business. "Just- um, I need your impression." She started.

"You have... Quiet reserve, I don't know, you've an- "

"I meant your fingerprint."

"Right." He cleared his throat and stuck his thumb on the ink pad clipped to the binder.

Potts stepped in. "So, how are we doing?" She gave Stark a pointed look.

"Great... Just half done." He pressed his thumb onto the documents and pointed at the fresh fingerprint. "Hey, you're the boss."

Natasha snapped the binder shut. "Would that be all, Mr. Stark?" She was ready to bolt.

"No" "Yes" They responded at the same time. "That would be all, Ms. Rushman, thank you _very_ much," Potts finished. While the first smile she had given Natasha at the mansion's front doors invited her in, this smile invited her out. Maybe something grittier than an invitation. Either way, Natasha sped out of the room a fast as she could. Any more time in there with both Stark and Potts and another one of them would ignite and detonate, and this time the impact might be enough to blast her off this mission and back to New York.

"I want one," Stark said.

"No," came Potts' restraint.

Natasha agreed.

She beelined for her office, closed the door and plopped onto her swivel chair. The afternoon sun had found her shelter and sent its rays through the large window behind her so that even though the air conditioning was on, her back began to burn. Natasha turned on the computer and skimmed the list of things she had to finish by day's end. Might as well do something right to shut Potts up. She booked them rooms for the annual Grand Prix in Monaco tomorrow as instructed, took care of the flights for the trip and answered a few phone calls. Bored and without anything else to do, she looked into the company's spendings and scrolled down the list with narrowed eyes:

The Food Bank, The Clean Water Project, The Plastic Plantation Tree Project, the World Wildlife Fund, the... _Boy Scouts of America?_

Stark was handing out money and contracts like Halloween candy to every organization imaginable.

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha squeezed between a group of champagne-holding businessmen, not bothering to apologize when her shoving almost spilled someone's glassful. She looked behind. The reporter that had been piling questions on her was out of sight, lost among the hundreds that had gathered in the Monacan hotel's immense lobby, the bodies packed so close together than when she rose on her tiptoes all she could see was an ocean of bobbing heads.

She checked her phone for the time. Another fifteen minutes before Stark's scheduled arrival, and that still depended on his punctuality. He had better be punctual. Two hours of nonstop interviews had long fouled her temper so that she no longer excused herself from questions, but rather glowered and turned her back on them. Her throat stung from her constant talking. When she breathed the suffocating mix of perfume and cologne and cigar smoke scored with tiny needles pass her nose.

An empty chair—fit for a mirage—tucked hidden between two tall ivory vases against a purple velvet wall. Natasha hurried towards it and plopped down with a huff. It wasn't anything comfortable: a bar stool dragged over from the adjacent dining room.

A flicker of something caught her eye. No, it was someone. As soon as she saw the face she reached for a book someone had left on the rim of the vase. _Monaco Grand Prix: A Photographic Portrait of the World's Most Prestigious Motor Race._ She flipped to a page of a red and white Marlboro racecar and propped the book over her face.

Something knocked her shoe. She snapped the book closed and dropped it on her lap. "This is your idea of a vacation?"

"What's wrong with it? Comin' to see the Prix, just like everyone else here." Clint raised his glass of champagne and took a sip. "Thought you should be tagging along Stark?"

"Not here yet, he scheduled for ten-thirty, though, should be any moment now."

"Hmm." Clint swished the champagne in his mouth.

"Did you save your seat in the stands outside?" Natasha asked.

"Huh? What seat?"

"You said you're here to see the Prix."

"Oh, well..." He grew restless on his feet.

Natasha rolled her eyes and smiled, then rose from the stool and took his champagne glass to her lips. She swallowed enough of the liquid to soothe her throat and returned the drink. "See you 'round. I'm gonna double-check Stark's reservations."

Clint hogged her seat as soon as she left, tossing her a light "have fun" that she barely heard over the noise in the room.

She confirmed the table Stark had booked in the dining room and his meetings for the day, then gave in to a quiet, meek photographer's request to take pictures of Stark. He asked so nicely, so softly midst the sharp yaps and demands that she couldn't help but comply. The little man tailed her, his camera in hand.

Stark and Potts whisked into view before she had even re-entered the lobby, chattering away while Hogan shadowed them with a gray and red metallic suitcase in hand.

"Mr. Stark," Natasha greeted.

"Hey." He tore the sunglasses off his face and beamed.

"Hello, how was your flight?"

"It was excellent. Oh, it's nice to see you." Stark's courtesy slipped on like a well-worn coat. He and Potts accepted the drinks an eager waiter offered.

"We have one photographer from the ACM, if you don't mind, ok?" Natasha took the drinks from their hands before they could raise them to their mouths. She nodded a cue to the cameraman behind her and stepped aside as he snapped the photos.

"Stop acting constipated, don't flare your nostrils," Stark ground through his teeth to Potts while trying to retain the forced smile on his face. Potts ignored the photographer altogether and kept right on talking to Stark. They talked over each other, their conversation's objective no more than to dominate, in both volume and sarcasm.

"Right this way." Natasha guided them to the table she had reserved.

"Thanks." Stark walked off on Potts to follow her. "You look fantastic."

"Why, thank you very much."

"But that's unprofessional. What's on the docket?" He threw a wary glance towards the table she'd reserved. A flock of people gathered in the adjacent bar, squabbling like geese. He must be avoiding someone.

"We have a nine-thirty dinner," Natasha said.

"Perfect, I'll be there at eleven." He pointed to the table at a quiet corner. "Is this ours?"

"It can be," she replied.

"Great. Make it ours."

"Ok."

While she arranged with a nearby waiter for the switch, Potts caught up with them. Stark offered to have "Natalie" fix a massage appointment for her, but she declined with a muttered "I don't want Natalie to do anything." He went on to jab at her a few more times before a new voice perked up:

"Anthony, is that you?"

"My least favorite person on Earth, Justin Hammer," Stark grumbled.

"How ya doin'? You're not the only rich guy here with a fancy car!" Hammer continued, landing a hand on Stark's back.

Hammer pulled over a girl from Vanity Fair to chat. The girl's presence muddied the already toxic atmosphere, and it was but a few exchanges later that Potts made to leave, leaving behind her a wide-eyed, helpless Stark. As soon as Potts left Hammer threw an arm around Stark's neck, almost knocking their heads together, and a cameraman shot forth for his opportunity. As if torture hadn't a better representation, Christine Everhart, the Vanity Fair girl, decided then to shove a voice recorder under Stark's nose, and out she dribbled a bombard of questions.

"Is our table ready?" Natasha asked a passing waiter.

"For Mr. Stark? Yes it is."

Stark looked like he needed an escape. She approached the table the trio had just settled in. "Mr. Stark?"

He shot up at the sound of her voice. "Yes?"

"Your corner table is ready."

"Thank God," he said under his breath and left to join her. "Hammer needs a slot!"

Stark headed off to the bathroom without so much as a glance at his new table, rubbing his forehead as he went. His other hand fumbled with a small metal box in his pocket.

Of course, the headaches that accompanied his palladium poisoning. She'd need to get her hands on that box soon, or she'd have nothing to report to S.H.I.E.L.D.

When he came back a few minutes later, Natasha bumped into him and flicked the box from his pocket with a deft hand. He didn't notice, apologized, and hustled away. His eyes glowered with an unnerving sense of purpose.

Natasha locked herself inside a bathroom stall and turned on the blood meter she stole, stiffening at the display screen.

BLOOD TOXICITY: 53%

Stark was pretty much half dead.

She adjusted the settings on the side of the scanner to a few days prior, and another percentage appeared.

BLOOD TOXICITY: 19%

He's dying quick, too.

Natasha tucked the box into a slip pocket on the inside of her dress hem and turned her comm on.

"Coulson."

"Romanoff."

"I have information on the rate of the palladium diffusion," she whispered. "Stark's contamination level has increased by over thirty percent in less than a week. If Director Fury plans on interfering, I suggest he do so within the next few days or Stark will run out of time."

When she came out of the bathroom the crowds had flocked to the TV screen on the walls. Gasps mixed in with criticisms and whispers, and a few jeers rose above the noise. Natasha joined in, craning her neck to see what all the commotion was about.

Stark had changed into a blue racing suit, his last name slanted white across the fabric. The circuit for the Prix draped behind him like a show about to start.

"Well what's the use of having and owning a race car if you don't drive it?"

The crowd spewed into chaos.

Tony waved the original driver to his car off with a cocky flick of his wrist, and the other man flung his helmet to the ground in anger and lumbered out of the camera's view. Stark stepped into the Formula 1.

"Natalie, Natalie!" Potts beckoned her from two tables away.

Natasha scampered to her. "Yes, Ms. Potts?"

"Did you know about this?" Potts' stare bore into her face, blame lurking just below the surface.

"Uh... This is the first time I've known of it."

The drivers' list on the screens refreshed, confirming Tony's spot in the race.

"This...this cannot happen."

"Absolutely I understand how can I help you?" Natasha asked. Potts' frantic behavior was rubbing off on her.

"Where is Happy?"

"He's waiting outside."

"Ok, get him. I need Happy."

"Right away." Natasha turned to the direction of the exit. As she hurried along a different voice called out to her.

"Nat, where're you going, what's going on?"

"Getting their bodyguard," Natasha replied. She glanced at the screen again. Stark had his helmet on. It was now or never.

Hogan wasn't by the door.

She cursed and wedged between a group of women to return to the lobby. Clint trailed closer behind. "Is that him?" He steered her to the right, where a man stretched out, asleep on an armchair with his sunglasses on. The red and gray metallic suitcase hung off his hand by two fingers.

"Thanks." Natasha pulled Clint along with her. "Hogan!" She shouted.

He didn't stir.

She stomped on his foot with the heel of her shoe. Hogan shot out of his seat. The suit in his hand clattered to the ground.

"Yes, Mr. Stark!"

"It's _Rushman_. Ms. Potts wants you right away," Natasha snapped.

'Right away' turned out to be too late. When they returned, Potts had slouched over in her seat, a hand on the bridge of her nose. Natasha looked to the TV. The race had begun.

She approached Potts slowly. "Would you like me to speak to a superintendent or...?"

"No, no." Potts shook her head. "I don't want to disrupt this race any more than Tony already has."

Sensing her dismissal, Natasha left her. With Clint by her side they sat down on a couch—the seats had cleared now that everyone surged toward the screens—eyes on the live stream ahead. The racers glided over the narrow circuit, rounded blood-curdling tight corners, and packed next to each other with a mere coat of paint's distance in-between. Stark came whizzing out of a tunnel and gained on the yellow car to his right, advancing to the fifth place. The cameras switched to close-ups of the other racers for a few minutes, then stayed at the leading car.

A sudden angle cut. An intervention personnel, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, pushed aside the fencing bordering the racetrack. Off came his helmet, tossed onto the ground. He strode down the track, unflinching to the leading cars that sped past him, going against the traffic, down and down. The camera zoomed in on his face.

The crowds leaned forward. The noise level multiplied ten-fold in a matter of seconds.

Natasha got up without a word and left.

"Hey, Natasha?" Clint called behind her.

She kept walking.

He was up now, his steps choppy and quick to catch up to her. "Nat?" He reached for her shoulder, but she shrugged him off. He took her hand next and she yanked it out of his grasp. Her palms had dampened. He didn't need to know.

Clint followed her into the elevator, barely missing the closing door, and she turned away from him and faced the glass wall. Her expression stared back at the both of them. In the reflection Clint shifted his stance, about to speak, and just then the elevator door spilled open. She slipped out pass him and set out to find her hotel room.

The room was dark. She swung the door behind her and waited for the slam. It didn't come. Replacing it was a soft click of the latch, of a door properly closed; again he had made it in just in time. He just wouldn't leave her alone.

Natasha kicked off her high heels and stretched out along the length of the couch in a corner, knees unbent to occupy the largest sitting area possible, and turned on her phone to hold it close to her face, scrolling and shuffling the app pages without interest.

"Too stuffy downstairs?" Clint asked from next to the door.

"Yeah."

"Got kinda loud, too. Louder. What with that guy walking into the racetrack. That can't be good."

"That's nothing. I've seen worse."

The lights overhead snapped on then, harsh yellows and whites that fluttered close her eyes, and when she blinked them open Clint had stepped closer, so that if she turned her head toward his direction she'd catch a whiff of the pressed-suit smell on him.

"Say it." His tone changed. "Tell me what's wrong."

Natasha placed her phone on her stomach, and her hands on top of it.

"Natasha."

She traced a finger along the creases on the cushion under her body. Then her movements grew with force, and her nails scored the red velvet hard enough to make a scratching sound. In her position there wasn't anything to look at save the bright tinted ceiling, and if she looked just the slightest to the left she'd see Clint frowning down at her, so she didn't.

"Tell me."

"It's not important."

"Yeah, right."

"It's not important as in it won't change anything."

"It's important as in I still want to know."

She laughed quietly. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"And why is that?"

Natasha picked up her phone and toyed it in her hand, then pushed off the couch. She walked to the two-counter kitchenette and swirled a plastic cup under the running faucet. The foaming water spewed over the top with a sigh and left a layer of tiny, popping bubbles on her hand, like wrenching open a shaken-up bottle of soda. She turned the faucet off with a slap and, holding the dripping cup, leaned against the counter and sipped the water.

"You should go back down," Natasha said.

"Maybe I will." Clint moved to stand next to her, a hand on the counter next to her body. "But after."

"No."

"Who is he?"

She smeared the bead of water trailing down her arm, then scratched the skin there crimson.

In a whisk he placed his other hand next to the other side of her body so that he forced her against the counter. She stared back at him and narrowed her eyes. The red plastic cup crackled under her grip.

"Who is he?"

Natasha pushed past his barrier and tossed the cup, along with its contents, into the sink. "Race is over. I need to check on Stark."

He grabbed her arm and yanked. "Tell me." He tightened his hold. "Or you can't leave."

She could turn this into a fight, an ugly, head-ringing fight that her hands shook for, but Clint shouldn't be caught in the middle of this, whatever it was. Maybe he'd understand if she told him freely, shallowly, like the quick flick of a damp brush over paper and up again, and he'd make himself forget it and then she could forget it and he would let her go and she would dip downstairs and find Stark and Potts. Potts. Potts would fire her. Potts would definitely fire her.

"Ivan Vanko. He used to work under the Red Room."

As quick as the brush had skimmed, it flew, hovered with expectation for the page to dry. Clint's hand around her arm loosened.

He didn't follow her out this time.

In the lobby the commotion had doubled. The noise level had peaked to squalls and high-pitched yells. About a dozen police officers mixed among the guests, barking orders and pushing the people back every which way. Natasha grabbed a nearby cop. "Sir, what's going on?"

"You didn't see?" The cop shouted.

"I didn't feel well, so I was away."

"I don't have time for specifics, miss." He paused to throw back a man charging at another. "There was a guy with some kind of electric whips on the track; smashed like four of the cars."

"Fatalities?"

"Yeah. One dead driver. Two in critical."

"Any word on Tony Stark?"

"Tony Stark?" He snorted. "He brought out his suit! Iron Man! The whole deal! Saved half a dozen cars because of him!"

"Where is he now?"

"I don't know. Saw his CEO outside just now, though."

Outdoors the smell of car exhaust consumed the air. More police cars. She asked around a few more times before getting substantial information from a sergeant: Potts, along with Stark, had gone with the police: they were seeing Vanko, who had been put in prison.

Her intentions wavered. Should she go after them or not?

Around her the currents of people continued to tug, in and out, left and right. The congested traffic stretched over what looked like a quarter-mile. It would take her long, if she did follow Stark.

Natasha dove back indoors.

The cops ushered her to the elevator when she tried to linger by the lobby. Reluctantly she complied, taking extra time with her steps back to her room. Clint would still be there no doubt. He'd be there with an onslaught of questions that she didn't want to answer, didn't want to think about.

The lights were still on. He hadn't moved from where she had left him by the sink, but he did look at her with surprise, and that surprise washed off his face within seconds as he strode to her and grabbed her shoulders.

Clint shook her. "What the hell, Natasha?"

"I told you. What else do you want?" Her voice wouldn't louden whatever she tried.

"That's not the point."

"Then what is?"

He let go of her, crossed his arms in front of his chest and looked away. "You can't just... drop something like that for me."

"I didn't drop anything. You asked me."

"It's like I never knew you." His voice dropped.

How dare he said that? She looked at him, at her wrung-together hands, at the sink leaking rhythmic _plunk, plunk_ drips of water. The air here was so still she missed the turbulence in the lobby. Empty and expectant, the silence forced her to speak, and once she did the words rushed like water between her fingers; she couldn't get them back:

"It's like I don't know myself."

Clint's gaze returned to her. His expression didn't change, but he drew her to him by the wrist and put his arms around her. He muttered something incomprehensible. The heels of his palms massaged slow circles into her back, and she squeezed her eyes closed and breathed with her nose mashed against his shoulder, and only then did the tension leave her body, taking with it a sliver of the shock and rage she had suppressed; leashed. She sighed to the release. Perhaps this was better than having him forget...

"I'm sorry..." His voice came through now. "All I thought about was myself..."

He had nothing to say after that. She had nothing to say to him.


	3. Chapter 3

Natasha called Potts' number the next morning. Stark hadn't returned last night, and she had regretted laying low in the hotel without checking in with him. Potts would be furious; and she was:

"Natalie! What's the meaning of this? No contact at all with these circumstances?"

"Ms. Potts, I-"

"Save it. Get over here now."

With a brittle tone Potts related to Natasha the address for a burger restaurant. She must have been embarrassed by the sheer absurdity of the location, hanging up on Natasha as soon as she was done.

The traffic around the hotel was no better than yesterday; it took Natasha half an hour just to escape the cars rimming a barrier around the Prix site. When she arrived, Potts was in her face before she even touched the restaurant's doors.

"Took you long enough." Potts yanked the door open for her.

The chilly atmosphere inside resonated Potts' attitude. Stark sprawled over one side of a booth, tossing fries into his mouth, and it took her three slaps on his thighs to get him to sit straight.

"I told you she'd come back," he said to Potts, pointing at Natasha.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Stark, Ms. Potts. I had-"

"Fry?" Stark shook a paper tray at her.

Natasha shook her head. Potts was watching the both of them, her disbelieving look snapping back and forth, her cheeks smouldering.

"Natalie, where were you?" She asked. "I sent Happy to look for you. I phoned you about thirty times a minute. I-"

"Oh, leave her alone, Pep." Stark groaned. "What did you want my P.A to do? Cheerlead for me? I mean that would've been nice, but I'd rather have her as my boxing-"

"We need to keep everyone together. I pay her good money for her job."

Stark ignored her. "You hungry?" He asked Natasha. "They've got really nice cold sandwiches here."

Potts sighed. "Tony, we need to leave."

"The milkshakes are good, too." He continued his offer.

" _Tony!_ _We have to go._ "

"Ok. But milkshake for my notary first."

"Fine, fine! I'll order. Now get _out._ "

The three of them packed into Hogan's car. Stark rode shotgun, while the two others took the backseat. Natasha bit the straw on her drink cautiously. This was ridiculous, being stuck in a car with these folks, pressured into drinking a chocolate milkshake while they drove to the airport for the flight back to Malibu.

Once on the plane Potts retreated to a small, closed-off office to work. Hogan hogged the couch. Stark floated around the narrow rooms, alternating between talking to JARVIS and himself. Natasha plowed through the hundreds of e-mails in her inbox. Inquiries surrounding Stark and his company she could handle, but not ones for the actual incident, having missed the show herself. Potts walked past while Natasha was still on the first page of mail, told her to leave the messages for when they get home, and gave her time off for the duration of the flight.

Natasha spent the next few hours sucking on a cup of ice cubes and clicking through articles and news stories. Debates on social networks generated enough aggression for entire sites to collapse, and all pointed to the same question: Can Iron Man still protect us, and should the government confiscate his suits?

Natasha had no answer herself.

She closed the tabs and played internet Tetris.

Some time later, Stark slunk pass her and into the kitchen. Exceptionally quiet since they boarded the plane, the only words from him were a few half-hearted attempts at talking to Hogan and mumbling about cycles and ionizers under his breath. Not a word to her or Potts, knowing that he would be treated like the last speaker at a presentation that no one wanted to hear.

Cupboards slammed, plastic rustled, and a soft "find me a recipe" followed the clangor in the kitchen.

A constant string of curses and clanking chinaware dragged on for an hour. At some point a burnt smell so unpleasant invaded the air that Natasha couldn't help but block her nose with the side of her hand and breathe through her mouth. Stark sighed, spat a few colorful swears about kitchen appliances and stuck his head out the doorway.

"Hey, you. Lady."

"Yes, Mr. Stark?" She paused her game.

"Do you know how to cook? Can you help me?"

"I'm no good either, sorry."

"Oh, it's ok, I'll figure it out." He looked crestfallen.

"What are you making?" Natasha asked. What sort of problem could cooking pose for a man who toyed daily with active explosives and microscopic wiring? A rubber spatula?

"...Spaghetti..." Stark grimaced and held up a ladle of nondescript goo. The gunk dripped onto the floor.

"Well, why don't you try something easier?" She eyed the mess uneasily.

"Like?"

"I don't know, an omelet?" She shrugged.

Stark vanished. "Omelet recipe, JARVIS," he said.

The fridge opened and closed. "No cheese, JARVIS."

The chorus of smashing spoons and bowls resumed. Stark reappeared after a half hour. "Can you come look?" He asked, wringing his hands together.

Natasha stood and leaned over just far enough to see what he had made. The yellowish pile on the plate succeeded in the general color of an omelet, except for a big burnt spot in one corner. The spinach and mushrooms looked like he had thrown them on the last minute, and liquid egg pooled on the bottom.

"I've seen better... And worse," Natasha commented. "You might want to cook it a bit longer though."

"Yeah, I know. I'll microwave it."

She raised an eyebrow.

Stark walked out with probably his worst creation to date a few minutes later. Potts, calloused to his questionable antics, handled it well. They pushed each other around with their usual banter before she asked something that jerked Natasha's attention from her game:

"Tony, what are you not telling me?" The hurt in Potts' voice protruded their otherwise drawling conversation.

A long, tense expanse of time passed before Stark replied, his syllables tensed:

"I don't want to go home at all. Let's cancel my birthday party and uh... We're in Europe. Let's go to Venice. Chipriani, remember? It's a great place to be healthy."

Be healthy? Now? The last time Natasha checked his concentration level earlier this morning, he had peaked to 78%.

"I-I don't think this is the right time, we're in a... kind of a mess," Potts said softly, the end of her sentence dissipating like steam.

"Yeah, well maybe that's why it's the best time."

6:43 PM. Stark, less than useless with the press, slipped downstairs to brood once they returned to the mansion, and the music he blasted in there boomed through the entire building. Potts carted out laptops and documents for her and Natasha. Stocked on beverages, they prepared for an evening of dry throats and tired, gritty eyes. A long screen set up on the wall before them reran yesterday's attack and streamed the news. Natasha took care to only take the slightest glance; she might have gotten over the initial shock of seeing Vanko after all these years, but that didn't mean she could sip her orange juice without chewing on the rim of the glass whenever he came up on the screen.

James Rhodes, a friend of Stark's, visited. He lingered by the corner of the room, watching the TV screen with Natasha and Potts, a frown overflowing on his face. Currents of disappointment spun up a hurricane inside that tense body leaning against the wall. Stark was going to get an earful.

After he had left, out of a sudden, Stark banged his shoes up the stairs to join the women. "It's 7:30. Where's my birthday party?"

Potts said a hurried good-bye to the interviewer on the phone and looked at him. "You said you wanted it canceled. It's two weeks early, anyway, can't we reschedule?"

"Uh, no?" He spread his arms.

"Tony, I'm wearing my vocal chords and fingers to dust here trying to fix the hole you've blown in the media, and you want to _party?_ Do you care at all?"

"Of course I care. I want my party. That's why I'm standing here."

"You can't have it." Potts plastered her attention to her laptop.

Stark looked to Natasha. "You. What's your say on this?"

Natasha ignored him.

"Look, I want my party. If I don't get my party within an hour I'm blowing this place up."

" _Tony!_ " Potts slammed her laptop shut.

"I'm not kidding. You know I'm not kidding. You know where and what the wirings around this place is for."

"Ok, ok! You're getting your stupid party." Potts gave in. "But I want no part in this." She turned to Natasha. "Natalie, fix the place up with Happy. Confirm the guest lists. Whatever. I'm going in my office. I don't want anyone knocking on my door."

In a whirlwind she clawed the papers and tablets on the table into a crumpled pile, crammed them in her arms, and stormed out of the room.

The guests began to pool in front of the main entrance around 9:00. Natasha waded neck-deep through a closet of Stark's tailored suits, under his instruction to bring out something nice for him. When she handed him her selections he gave a half-hearted nod and waved her off, but called her back as she was exiting.

"Get me a martini, Notary, real dirty. Whatever you've got. I don't give a damn anymore."

Familiar footsteps fell in line with hers as she walked to the bar. Where else did she expect Clint to be after yesterday? Natasha didn't bother with a greeting. Hours of quieting the press and Stark's mis-timed, almost mocking techno music from his basement lab had drained her mood.

"You want one?" She offered, shaking the vodka and vermouth concoction Stark ordered.

Clint nodded. His eyes whisked over the room, scrutinizing every entering guest.

"Quit looking at those bikini girls like they're serial killers."

"A man in an orange jumpsuit turned out to be a soviet convict yesterday, and you're telling me to chill?"

She disregarded that comment and handed him his martini. He downed it in two gulps.

"I need to see to Stark." She set a second martini glass and the rest of the liquor on a serving platter. "And, Clint? You're hooked to my comm, aren't you?"

"Well..."

"I don't gossip Red Room with Coulson."

Potts, despite her earlier vow to remain unseen throughout this unorthodox operation, poked outside to find Natasha. "There's a box of watches from a businessman in your office, Natalie, make sure Tony looks them over."

Picking up her pace, Natasha walked in on Stark, who stood staring into a hologram of his palladium levels. 89%. She took a long breath and set down the tray with the martini, then went to fetch the watches.

"Do you know which watch you'd like to wear tonight, Mr. Stark?" Natasha asked when she returned with the box.

Stark hastened to button up his shirt, but too late, Natasha had already caught the reflected angry black veins fanning out from his chest.

"I'll give them a look," he said.

Natasha set down the watches, reached for the platter she had left on the table, and swished the shaker of liquor before pouring the liquid into a glass.

"I should cancel the party now?" Stark asked.

So _now_ he realized his rashness. "Probably," she said.

"Yeah... Cause it's um-"

"Ill-timed?" She interrupted and gave him his drink.

"Right, sends the wrong message."

"Inappropriate," Natasha chastised. Throwing a wild house party a day after the Europe disaster was no way to repair the quivering film of peace. They all knew it. Just that some of them didn't want to believe it.

Stark sipped his drink and held her gaze.

"Is that dirty enough for you?"

"Uh... gold faced with the brown band. The Jaeger." He ditched her question and sank onto an armchair. "I'll give that a look. Bring 'em over here."

Natasha fetched him the box of watches.

"I'll take that, why don't you-" Stark started, grabbing the box from her hands and attempting to usher her away, but stopped mid-sentence when she settled on an arm of his chair. Natasha glanced at the bruise under his left eye with mild amusement and produced a container of colored concealer. He'd show up with _that_ on his face later? Not happening under her watch. Self-obsessed and careless or not, he'd grown on her. Never before had she been assigned to watch out for someone; to watch a target die not by her hand. The early birthday party made sense then. The donations. Throwing himself into the race. Detouring conversations with Potts whenever they steered just the slightest to a sensitive topic. There's people he'd miss and people who'd miss him, and none of them held a clue to what he's going through.

Natasha'd never seen a lonelier man than Tony Stark.

What about her? If her life span was calculated like his what would she do? Who would miss her? Who would she miss and care enough to hide like Stark did? He had planned to go out with a bang in the press, staying true to his reputation as a wreck-it-all till the end, probably knowing that Potts would take it better this way than if there had been nothing to distract her.

Who would care enough about _her_ that they'd need a distraction when she's gone?

The memory of Clint's arms around her yesterday returned, warm against her back, and the same warmth sparked in her now though he was absent. _"Maybe that's why it's the best time."_ Stark's words earlier today reeled back then, and she understood; understood it better than the slow, twisting pain that writhed inside her. Natasha held her breath and dabbed the makeup under Stark's eye.

"I gotta say, it's hard to get a read on you, where are you from?"

His question pulled her out of her trance, and she let go of her breath to answer him. "Legal."

Stark swallowed uncomfortably before raising another question.

"Can I ask you a question hypothetically? Bit odd."

Natasha closed the lid on the concealer and waited for him to continue.

"If... this was your last birthday party you're ever gonna have, how would you celebrate it?"

His question barely skimmed her thoughts. Anything hypothetical was the last thing she wanted to think about while her mind roamed beyond the room to Clint on the premises, listening in on her comm at this very moment. She gave an answer meant more for herself than Stark:

"I'd do whatever I wanted to do, with whoever I wanted to do it with."

And she was gone, her steps delirious against tile; heading outside Stark's room and outside the mansion; into her car and off through the looming, dark canopy of trees shading the road and to her hotel, flew to her room and locked herself in the bathroom. Natasha tossed her dress into a corner and stepped into the shower. The water scorched her skin. She stood with her hair dripping onto her face until her head stopped spinning, got out and threw on a new dress: shorter, with more breathing room for her skin, in a leopard print that she didn't care for.

When she opened the bathroom door with escaping clouds of steam, Clint was at her table, leafing through some papers he had found.

"Hey," she said. Surprise had drained out of her. What remained was barely responsive.

"You need to head back. Stark's gone wild and done blew up everything. Potts won't be able to keep him in line any longer, you might need to report this to Coulson."

Natasha held back a grimace. She was responsible, at least partly so, for feeding those reckless ideas into Stark. On the rare occasion that he asked someone what he should do, Natasha had given him the most unthinkable answer: to do whatever he wanted, and who knew what Stark wanted. Who knew what _she_ wanted. What she didn't want was to return and see the wreckage she had unconsciously caused.

But of course, as Stark's PA, she had no choice. Into the car she went, with Clint beside her, and as they sped along the gritty road the wind soothed her guilt into a fitful rest, and she became aware of Clint's eyes on her.

"Did you mean what you said back there? With Stark?" He asked.

Natasha's nod was almost nonexistent, but she nodded nonetheless.


	4. Chapter 4

Hundreds gathered outside the mansion, buzzing and humming like angered wasps. Natasha waded through them and pushed the glass doors open. The muted booming inside crashed in waves over her. Her ears rang. Whatever was going on, it hadn't reached the front of the mansion yet.

She stopped one of the bikini girls scampering out. "What's going on?"

"We were all having fun with Tony and everything, then this other guy showed up and told us to get out." The brunette tossed her hair away from her face—were those _watermelon chunks_ matted into the strands?—and resumed, "now they're fighting in there, suits n' everything."

Natasha let her go and pushed on, deeper into the building.

"Hey, come back," Clint said behind her. "This is out of your bounds. Just find the CEO and report this back to Coulson. _This is not your fight._ "

"Get out, Clint. Get everyone off the premises. Stark won't play in the backyard forever."

"What about you?"

Just then, Potts and Hogan tumbled out from one of the hallways. The former saw Natasha and stormed.

"Natalie!" She snapped.

"Ms. Potts."

The rumbling and smashing migrated to above their head. They needed to step away _now._ But Potts continued her accusations, either oblivious or careless to the imminent danger:

"Oh, don't you 'Ms. Potts' me, I'm onto you!" She shook a finger at Natasha. "You know what? Ever since you came here-"

The ceiling collapsed in a downpour of dust and debris. Potts screamed. A flash of red-orange emerged, then a silvery-gray. Mechanical whirs infiltrated the air.

Clint clawed at Natasha's arm, yanking her away. She wrenched his hand off and, while Hogan herded Potts outside, skirted around Stark and Rhodes for the basement stairs.

" _Natasha!_ " He caught up to her.

"If you're coming with me, then shut up," she said. "I need to disable those suits."

The lab security was on critical defense. "This is gonna take long," she muttered, working the keypad.

"I'm going up." Clint ran back the way they came.

Two minutes later he came loping back, pushed Natasha away from her tinkering and dragged her towards the back of the building.

"What do you think you're doing?" She yelled at him.

"Keeping you in one piece!"

A roaring explosion confirmed his prediction. Her legs voluntarily moved then, high heels crunching and tripping over broken glass, dented floorboards, knocked-over decor. Sandstorms of white powder from crumbled walls stole a trail of coughs from her. At last fresh air hit her lungs as they emerged at the back of the mansion.

"I was almost _done._ " Natasha said, kicking up the dirt.

"I don't care. You should have listened to me and just called Coulson."

"This is not even your business. _You're not even supposed to be here._ "

"It's none of yours either." Clint went quiet.

She touched her time was it in New York City now? Three in the morning? Four? "Coulson, Stark just blew up his house."

"Care to clear things up for me?"

"He hosted an early birthday party, got into a fight with James Rhodes. Judging from the explosion just now I'm certain his concentration is well into the 90's."

" _We?_ Barton's with you? And why didn't you keep an eye on Stark?"

"Well..."

Coulson sighed. "He's almost gone then? I'll inform Fury, he should be coming tomorrow. Give Stark the emergency meds, just in case."

The front of the mansion gaped naked, exposed, with its wall of glass shattered to shards, glimmering against the floor. The constellations of little round white and blue lights on the ceiling, by some miracle, were still functional, and they blinked and threw down weak beams over the wrecked room, mocking the aftermath of Stark's showdown. Stark himself slumped over in a corner, still encased in his suit. Rhodes was nowhere in sight.

Natasha went over to her car, still parked outside the now-deserted premises, and shook out a little box from her purse. From it she loosened a syringe and vial, and walked back to Stark. "Clint, pull his mask off, please."

He did as she told, eyeing her as she punched the syringe needle into the foil-topped vial and drew the plunger.

Natasha pushed at Stark's jaw to stick the needle in his neck. It was then that a solitary click of shoes against pavement permeated the still night, headed her way. Natasha withdrew the syringe and sneaked it to Clint, who began to veer out of sight.

"Natalie? Is that you?" Came Potts' voice.

Natasha nodded.

Potts knelt next to Stark, putting a palm to his reddening face. "Tony, you stupid, stupid thing." Then turning to Natasha, "Where's Rhodey?"

"I didn't see him when I got here, Ms. Potts."

Stark stirred. The creak of this armor accompanied a loud groan. He squeezed his eyes shut, blinked a few times, and when he registered the faces staring at him, he gave a muttered "to hell with you all," and seconds later Potts jumped back with a yelp. In a blast of orange fire he was gone, nothing but a vague dot in the sky.

Potts watched his glow vanish, her face fixed like a mannequin. "I'm done with you," she said to Natasha. "Go home."

"But I can help with the damage, Ms. Potts. I can-"

" _Go home._ "

Behind Potts, Hogan materialized as if to reinforce her words.

Why bother staying if no one wanted her to? Natasha nodded and headed for her car. Clint was already there, watching her from the backseat as she slipped in, and ducked when Potts looked in their direction.

"Such warm company they are," he said.

"It's my fault." Natasha clipped her seatbelt on.

"No, it's not."

"What do you know?"

Someone knocked on their hotel room's door early the next morning. Fixing her shirt, Natasha opened the door.

"Director, hi."

Fury lumbered in, plopped a briefcase onto the table where Clint sat with a cup of coffee, and sat down himself. "Define 'vacation', Barton."

"Vacation: noun. Time away from work devoted to pleasure and rest."

"Good. Now reflect on that. Romanoff—" Fury beckoned Natasha. "Set up a perimeter around Stark's house while I get him. Here's your equipment." He patted the briefcase. "Barton, go with her, if you're not planning on already. When you're done, ask Coulson for my location."

"Coulson's here?" Clint asked.

Fury nodded and got up from his chair. "Start runnin'. I don't have time for playing 'around." The door slammed and he was gone.

The mansion teemed with S.H.I.E.L.D agents, surveying and assessing last night's damage. A few helicopters perched the grounds. Coulson stood where the front doors used to be, talking into his walkie-talkie and scribbling on a clipboard.

"Where's Potts?" Natasha asked him.

"Stark Enterprises, L.A. You two are doing the perimeter, right?"

It took them an hour to set up the sensors around the grounds and hook them to the systems. When they finished and returned to the rendezvous site, Coulson was still where they'd left them. Still mumbling into his walkie-talkie.

"We're done," Clint informed. "Where's Fury?"

Coulson turned on his loudspeaker mode. "Director, I've got Barton and Romanoff ready."

"Give them the helicopter and tell 'em to come party with us at Randy's," came the radio. "The one in Inglewood. Stark's sitting on a giant donut eating his breakfast."

Natasha held back a smirk.

Coulson looked uneasy. "Yes, Director..."

"Oh, and give Romanoff that extra dose of the lith, Stark's gonna need it."

Coulson opened a satchel next to him and tossed a box to Natasha. In it was a syringe and vial like yesterday's.

"SIR. I'M GONNA HAVE TO ASK YOU TO EXIT THE DONUT!" Fury's voice continued to blare.

Hiding a smile of his own, Coulson turned the volume down.

Once they landed the helicopter on a deserted parking lot, fifteen minutes later, Natasha and Clint walked the half-mile to the donut shop. A giant, plastic donut mounted the roof. Inside the atmosphere was sodden with sugar and grease, and the only customers were two figures to the far end, crouched over a booth. Clint silently took a seat by the door. Leaving him, Natasha walked to the figures.

"We've secured the perimeter, but I don't think we should hold it for much too longer," she said to Fury.

Stark dropped his cup of coffee onto the table and stared at the gun on her hip, before tilting his head down to look at her without his sunglasses.

"Huh." He managed to get out. "You're... fired..."

"That's not up to you." She sat next to Fury.

"Tony, I want you to meet Agent Romanoff."

"Hi," he said listlessly, rubbing his forehead.

"I'm a S.H.I.E.L.D shadow, once we knew you were ill I was tasked to you by Director Fury."

"I suggest you apologize."

Fury cut in. "You've been _very_ busy. Made your girl your CEO, you've given away all your stuff. You let your friend _fly away with your suit!_ Now, if I didn't know better-"

"You don't know better. I didn't give it to him. He took it."

"Whoa whoa whoa. What now? He took it? You're Iron Man and he just... _took it?_ The lil' brother walked in there, kicked your ass, and _took your suit_. Is that possible?" He turned to Natasha for an answer.

"Well according to Mr. Stark's database security guidelines, there are redundancies to prevent unauthorized usage," she said.

Tony gave in. "What do you want from me?" He asked softly.

"What do we want from you? Nuh uh uh. What do _you_ want from _me?_ " Fury's voice faded away as Natasha got up and over to Clint. She held out her hand, and he gave her the syringe he had prepared. Returning to stand beside Stark, she waited for Fury's signal.

"I have bigger problems than you in the southwest region to deal with." Fury pointed at Stark. "Hit him."

Natasha jabbed the needle into his neck.

Stark made a garbled noise and jumped as the solution went in. "Oh _god_ —are you going to steal my kidney and sell it?" He strained. "Could you please not do anything awful for five seconds?"

Natasha ignored him and slapped his jaw around to look at the black lines crawling on his neck. They cleared as the chemicals took effect.

"What did she just do to me?" Stark asked.

"What did we just do _for_ you," Fury corrected. "That's lithium dioxide, it's gonna take the edge off. We're trying to get you back to work."

"Well give me a couple of boxes and I'll be as right as rain."

"It's not a cure, just abates the symptoms," Natasha said.

"Then the lag is going to be an easy fix," Fury added.

"Trust me, I know, I'm good at this stuff," Stark said. "I've been looking for a suitable replacement for palladium. I've tried every combination, every _permutation_ of every known element."

"Well I'm here to tell you: You haven't tried them all."

"Yeah, right." Stark threw them a disbelieving look.

"Come back to your house with us, we've got something for you."

"Whatever it is it's not gonna work."

"We'll see about that."

Fury herded Stark to the back of the mansion as soon as they returned. They grabbed a couple of chairs and sat down to talk while Natasha disabled the phone lines, internet, and any other means of reaching the outside world.

"Romanoff?" Coulson said from a few feet away from her. Natasha paused her work.

"You'll need to go over to Stark Enterprises later, we still need your cover intact. Potts will be missing you."

"I'll finish up, then."

"Oh—and run by the Director before you go."

Fury didn't have anything else for her. He brought out a heavy-looking safe box for Tony and left another appointment. Natasha was starting her car up when Clint, on guard duty, stuck his head over the roof of the building.

"Nat? Where're you going?"

"Los Angeles. Office job, no big deal."

His scowl dug into the back of her head as she drove off, but he didn't stop her.

Compared to the sunny, cushioned paradise of Stark's mansion, Stark Enterprises was cold and mechanical, its hundreds of employees moving about the halls and rooms with industrious speed. Potts didn't even look twice when Natasha entered her office. She plopped down before her a back-breaking box of letters and asked her to sort them in order by the sender's last name. After that it was photocopies. Uncountable times to the paper shredder. Faxes. Errands up and down the floors. Was this pay-back?

A few endless hours later they took to the nearby staff kitchen and, as its only occupants, sat in silence save the crackle of plastic wrappers and gush of the sink. Natasha eased down a few granola bars with a cup of water while continuing to work on her laptop.

"Natalie?"

"Yes, Ms. Potts?" Natasha looked up.

"Turn off that laptop. I want to talk."

Natasha folded the screen in and clasped her hands on the table.

"I've been... unfair. To say the least." Potts's gaze wandered the room. "It's been a lot to take in. I'm usually not like this, at least to anyone but Tony." She paused. "I'm sorry you had to deal with this mess so early into the job. I wasn't helping, was I?"

What if Potts had known about Stark's condition? What mood would that put her in then? "It's no problem," Natasha said, and bit down on her too-sweet granola bar.

"No no, Natalie, look. Since we're going to work with each other, I want to settle this. I don't want you to shrug it off. This is very important to me.

"I've said some things that I shouldn't have. I guess my expectations were distorted... no one else runs around Tony fishing up his shipwrecks as obsessively as I do..." Potts trailed off.

"That's a huge job you're taking up. He should be thankful."

"Yes, he's _very_ thankful." She rolled her eyes up. "So—we're starting fresh together, ok?"

"Ok." Natasha smiled.

"Enjoy your lunch, I'll be in my office." Potts hoisted herself up and, with a sigh, set her emptied tea mug into the sink. Then, with practiced fluency, she pulled taut the sag in her movements, and when she exited with a formidable _click_ of her heels, her steps no longer dragged.

The rest of the day went by with a surreal lightheartedness.

Around 6 p.m, Stark barged into the elevator just as Natasha was about to close it, on her way to the top floor. His hair spiked in a wind-blown mess, and in his arms he cradled a cardboard box of strawberries. "Hey," he said.

"Mr. Stark," Natasha greeted.

The elevator doors closed.

"Have you seen Pepper?"

"She's in her office."

"Does she know you're a, you know—S.H.I.E.L.D spy?"

She gripped her armful of binders harder. "I am not here to _spy._ "

"Uh-huh."

The elevator stopped its ascent. The doors opened. A few employees joined them with a few polite "Mr. Stark"'s. That shut him up.

After she finished work, Natasha helped Hogan pack Potts' bags—they were moving back to Malibu after a cleaning team had repaired the mansion to more or less a habitable level—and brought them up to her office. Slowly turning the door handle, a sliver of conversation seeped from inside.

"Ms. Potts?" Natasha called.

"Hi, come on in."

"Wheel's up in 25 minutes."

"Thank you."

Stark's baffled look followed her as she crossed the room to hand the last of the papers for Potts to sign. He attempted at a joke but received no responses. All around him were stony faces.

"Are you blending in well here, Natalie?" Stark swallowed. "...Here at Stark Enterprises? Your name is Natalie, isn't it?"

His confusion grew as she watched the two women.

"I thought you two didn't get along."

"No, that's not so." Potts said.

"So it's just me you don't care for," he concluded. "No? Nothing?"

"Actually, while you're here, maybe you and Natalie can discuss the matter of the personal belongings."

"Absolutely," Natasha said, and started to collect the forms on the desk. Potts left the room with Happy pulling her suitcase.

"I'm surprised you can keep your mouth shut," Natasha said to Stark as soon as they were alone, banging the stacks of folders into order louder than necessary.

"Boy, you're good," he blabbered. "You are _mind-blowingly duplicitous_. How do you do it? You... you just tear things up. You're a triple impostor. I've never seen anything like it. Is there anything real about you? Do you even speak Latin?"

"Fallaces sunt rerum species." She sauntered pass him to the door.

"Which means? What did you just say?" Stark looked offended.

"It means you can either drive yourself home, or I can have you collected," she snapped, slamming the door closed. No point in talking literature with him.


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning went by in relative peace.

The mansion was still covered in injuries, but the debris had been cleaned up, the bigger holes on the exterior walls boarded up. Stark had again locked himself inside his lab. Potts, passive at the throngs of S.H.I.E.L.D agents crawling and poking around her house, had pulled an all-nighter in her office, working straight into the sunrise.

Natasha was working in her office when Clint came in. He squeezed his eyes shut to the light in his face and came to stand behind her, blocking the sun warming her back, and leaned in to look at her computer screen. "Flushing Meadows, New York? What for?"

"Justin Hammer's exhibiting something at the Stark Expo. Potts wants to see what's up," she explained.

"Wish I can go."

"Ask Coulson. We're leaving this afternoon."

"Can't." Clint rested his chin on her shoulder, his hair brushing her cheek. "I'm leaving, too."

"Hmm?"

"Roswell, New Mexico. Fancy that."

"What is this... Roswell thing, then?"

"Weird atmospheric readings in a nearby town called Puente Antiguo. Word is some kind of worthwhile hammer dropped down from the sky." He gave a bored chuckle. "They want me as a guard."

A hammer? What, was it made of diamonds and gold? "They can't just truck it away or something?"

Clint shrugged.

"How long will you be there?"

"Indefinite, until they finish up research."

No confirmation date, then. He could be there for a few days or a few months. Something about the free-floating timeframe disagreed with her.

"Let's go get your things." Natasha got up. There was an uneasy twist in her stomach, and she tried to coax it down while they drove back to the hotel.

Packing his gear took an unnecessarily long time. Clint had no problem throwing everything together in minutes, yet here they were, taking care to smooth out the creases in folded shirts and triple-checking for equipment.

"Did you leave anything in the bathroom? Better go check."

"Nope, I didn't."

"Are you sure? There's no coming back, you know."

He gave in and turned to do as she told, but before he made it two steps she pulled him to her by a shirt corner and wrapped her arms around him. The clashing smell of sweat and deodorant and sunshine about him washed over her like summer wind, and when she closed her eyes and parted her lips she could taste it.

Then there was a pressure winding around her waist, gathering at her back and tugging her closer to him. Natasha pushed her nose into his shirt and sighed.

"Be careful," she mumbled.

Clint laughed, and the bass of it rumbled against her ear. "Tash, it's a _hammer_."

"That's the mindset I had for _this_ assignment."

His arms tightened around her. "I heard he got bailed out. Bombed the prison."

"As expected."

"If he's trying for Stark again... I don't want you near him."

"I can't promise anything, Clint."

"As expected."

When they drove back to Stark's, Clint got out of the car, leaned in through the window and pressed his lips to her cheek, and though a breeze blew, the warmth of his kiss feathered and caressed her skin long after it had ended. He ran off, turned around twenty paces later and waved to her.

Engines still whirring, Natasha honked back.

She might not run halfway across the world to tail him, but the same unease he held for her lurked below the surface of her mind.

After she had touched her cheek with the back of her hand enough times to convince herself that there was no heat nor discoloration, she turned off the engines and went inside the mansion.

Saws. First thing that invaded her hearing was the buzz of electric saws. Then it stopped-replaced by drilling; on and off, on and off. Back to saws. A couple of bangs. For a building in repairs that couldn't be a good sign.

She traced the source of the noise, discovering pipes and wires that straddled hallways and tunneled from floor to ceiling until she came to Stark's lab. At a press of a button she unlocked the door.

A snake of two-feet diameter pipes slithered along the length of the room, held off the floor by chairs, tables, stacks of books, and empty cardboard boxes. Stark, nestled into the mess, had his head dipped low, concentrated on work she couldn't see from her angle.

"The cleaning crew left four hours ago," Natasha said.

"Yes, quite a long time. I just had to—" He jumped back as sparks spluttered, and cursed. "—had to destroy something. Like I'm doing now." He worked for a few more minutes, ignoring her, then looked up, annoyed. "Can you, like, get out?"

She rolled her eyes. "Just don't collapse the ceiling."

Potts was in one of the living rooms, packing a large handbag. "Natalie, you ready to go?"

"Yep."

"Ok, good. What time does Hammer's exhibit begin again?"

"11 pm."

"Today is Saturday."

"Yes."

"All presentations according to the timetable should end by 10:30."

"If it's attention Hammer wants, he's got it."

"Not unlike this." Potts stood, grabbed her handbag, and kicked the coil of Stark's wires by her feet.

They arrived at the Expo at 10:54 PM, just enough time to walk to the Main Pavilion and sit down. The place crawled with people like ants cluttering around a piece of dropped fruit. Colossal fountains and pools stood as sentinels across the grounds, spewing streams and gushes of white-foamed water and colored light shows. A daunting flight of stairs elevated each stage structure, and they were all lighted, still running despite Hammer's presentation being the only one that had extended hours. Potts whispered a few mild threats.

The Main Pavilion, resembling a Colosseum, easily stretched over half a football field, supported by thick steel beams and topped by a flat glass roof. A steady feed of people pumped into its seats, and Potts and Natasha joined them, leaving behind the car for Hogan to take care of.

The front and center seats had already filled by the time they entered. they squeezed into the middle of the far right section and waited for the presentation to begin.

"What do you think Hammer has in mind?" Potts asked. "A better attitude would be a nice surprise."

Music blasted from the overhead sound systems at 11 pm. sharp. Justin Hammer came prancing out the left of the stage in a gray suit. The audience reluctantly applauded. Potts turned to Natasha with a what-is-this face.

Hammer danced and twirled his way to the podium to begin his welcoming speech.

"Ladies and gentlemen, for far too long, the country has had to place its brave men and women in harm's way. But then Iron Man arrived, and we thought the days of losing lives were behind us. Sadly, that technology was kept out of reach. That's not fair, that's not right. And it's just too bad."

"Oh, lord." Potts shook her head.

"Regardless, it was an impressive innovation, one that grabbed headlines the world over." He paused. "Well today, my friends, the press is faced with quite a different problem: They're about to _run out of ink_."

A few claps. A couple of stagehands ran up to wheel off the podium.

"Ladies and gentlemen, today I present to you the new face of the United States military: The Hammer Drone!" He pointed a finger at the empty stage behind him.

With a click and clank the floorboards retracted. A flock of robotic warriors rose: bulky, ashen metal androids with blue energy slits glaring on their heads.

Natasha would recognize the workmanship anywhere.

That slit of energy appeared on almost every invention Vanko made for Red Room. It was his trademark.

It had to be a coincidence. No way Justin Hammer was working with him; no matter how competitive he got he wouldn't look to a criminal. She only half-listened to the rest of his speech, staring at the drones.

The last piece of the floor slid apart. The thing that rose was no Hammer Drone.

No amount of weaponization would mutilate the look of Stark's suits.

"Oh, hell. _Rhodey._ " Potts shielded a hand in front of her eyes.

Rhodes—so _that's_ where he flew off to—saluted, earning a louder round of applause.

A sound halfway between a whir and a growl grew from the noise, heightening in volume until it overshadowed everything else. The audience swayed to its source: a stream of hot, white energy tearing across the sky to plummet through the hole in the roof. Iron Man landed dead center of the stage seconds later. The crowd erupted, cheering.

Stark put his metal arm over Rhodes' metal back and waved his other hand. Reluctantly, Rhodes joined in.

Potts' breathing was audible.

The next thing that happened cut short her breath altogether.

Rhodes pointed fire at Stark.

The drones followed suit soon after. People began to stir with panic. Then the attack began, and showers of bullets charged for Stark, penetrating the glass roof and raining shards onto the population below. The aerial drones took to the sky. The rest stomped off from their platforms and marched into the crowds, flushing them out of the pavilion faster.

"Natalie, backstage with me." Potts gathered her things and bolted the opposite direction everyone else headed in, paying no mind to the machines looming around her. Natasha grabbed her bag and hurried after her. They doubled down the steps to the programming units, where Hammer and his men were arguing over a computer screen.

"He's locked us out of the mainframe." A fear-ridden voice stammer.

"Who's locked you out of the mainframe?" Potts snapped as she rushed towards the group.

Hammer tried to usher them out. "Please, please, go away. I got this handled."

"Have you now?"

"Yes I do! In fact, if your guy hadn't showed up, this wouldn't be happening. So please now, go away! Thank you!" He turned back to his people.

So even in a situation like this Hammer still prioritized his pride. That wasn't going to work with Natasha; she had her own questions. Roughly, she locked his wrists behind his back and slammed his shoulder down onto the desk in the most painful arm lock she could give out.

"You're gonna tell me who's behind this. Who's behind this?" She twisted his arms against their joints.

"Ivan Ivan Ivan! Ivan Vanko!" He ground into the table.

So it _was_ him. "Where is he?"

"He's at my facility."

Natasha let him go and ran out. She wouldn't hide this time. What use would hiding do her? Nothing. Last time she hid from Vanko had almost ruined this assignment for her. So what if he's there? He had nothing to do with her now. He's just another threat.

When she reemerged into the public the fray had worsened. The drones roamed free around the premises now, firing into clusters of civilians and blasting buildings to crumbles. The police darted around and tried without success to direct order. Hogan waited by the bottom of the stairs, his car behind him.

"No one's answering the phone, what's going on?" He asked.

"Get in the car. Take me to Hammer Industries," she commanded.

"I'm not taking you anywhere!"

"Fine! You want me to drive?"

"No, I'm driving," he retorted quickly. "Get in the car."

Hogan drove like a kid with a bumper car as he tried to ditch the civilians and get on the freeway.

"Where's boss?"

"She'll be fine." Natasha loosened her hair from its pins, took out her S.H.I.E.L.D uniform from her bag and struggled out of her dress in the cramped space. "When we arrive I need you to watch the perimeter," she told Hogan. "I'm gonna enter the facility and take down the target."

He didn't answer. The car lurched. Through the front view window his eyes widened at her, and it registered to her what he was staring at.

"Watch the road," she told him, and lay back on the seat to pull the black fabric over her legs.

"I got it."

Hogan pulled up outside the facility in Queens ten minutes later. He wouldn't let her go in alone, so Natasha gave in and let him help.

The first guard she left for him. She slid two taser disks across the floor at the second one. Electric currents shot up the guard's legs and he crumpled.

The next few guards Natasha took down with her legs alone, knocking them unconscious but not dead. Then another two with stun grenades that took away their vision for a few seconds, giving her time to trip their feet and smash their skulls to the floor. One came at her with a baton in hand. She choked him with the garrote strapped to her waist. While still holding on to the thin rope she kicked another couple to the ground. One of them scrambled up and aimed a can of pepper spray at her. She locked her legs around his throat and twisted to unbalance him, slamming him face down to the ground and snatching the spray from his hands.

The air shifted behind her. Natasha whipped around in time to catch the punch meant for her head. She bent the limb back— _snap—_ and elbowed the shoulder joint on the other arm. All done. She stepped over the limp bodies and walked down the corridors, pepper spraying one of the men who had regained his footing.

There were no maps around, and Hammer didn't tell her where Vanko was, so she kicked open every door in her path. The process slowed her considerably, and Hogan caught up with her.

She booted the last door down the hall. This was it. She held her guns in front of her and wheeled in, her breathing raspy and tight.

The room was empty except for two sentries that hung dead from the ceiling.

"He's gone." The bastard slipped away right when she had him, and she knew exactly where he's headed. She needed to help Rhodes regain command over his suit.

Natasha entered the small room and placed her pistols on the far-end table, where control screens hung. She typed in a code on the keyboard to call up the Mark II suit's controls. Rhodes was rapid-firing at Stark at close range. Her fingers flew over the keys. In moments she gained access to his system. She hit the enter button three times and disabled the armor.

"Reboot complete," she announced. "You got your best friend back."

Stark's face showed up on the screen. "Thank you very much, Agent Romanoff."

Natasha scanned through his physical readings, provided by JARVIS. His organs had cleared of toxins. Overall function improved and most importantly, the element in his chest was no longer palladium.

"Well done with the new chest piece, I'm reading higher output and all your vitals look promising." A smile surfaced on her face.

"Yes. For the moment, I'm not dying. Thank you."

"What do you mean you're not dying?" A new voice butted in.

Potts flashed on the smaller screen above Stark's. "Did you say you're _dying?_ "

"That you? Uh, no. I'm not. Not anymore."

"What's... what's going on?"

"I was going to tell you I didn't want to-"

"You were going to tell me? You really were dying?"

"You didn't let me-"

"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME THAT?"

"I WAS GOING TO MAKE AN OMLETE AND TELL YOU."

"Hey, hey," Natasha interrupted. "Save it for the honeymoon. You've got incoming, Tony. Looks like the fight's coming to you."

"Great. Pepper?"

"Are you ok now?" Her voice calmed somewhat.

"I am fine. Don't be mad. I will formally apologize-"

"I _am_ mad."

"-when I'm not fending off a Hammeroid attack."

"Fine."

"We could've been at Venice."

"Oh please."

Tony had JARVIS restart Rhodes' suit. Natasha watched the map on the screen. The drones were approaching fast and they had no time for arguing. "Priorities, Stark..." She muttered.

They took the drones down relatively fast. Hammer's suits were made of flimsy material that gave easily, and they lacked agility.

This couldn't be all.

Natasha zoomed out on the map display. One last icon moved towards Stark: HSD 001. This was it.

"Head's up, you got one more drone incoming. This one looks different, repulsor signature's significantly higher," she warned. The suit material was different also, this wasn't the putty that clothed the other androids. She tried to fetch the details on it but found none. That suit wasn't connected to Hammer's systems; she doubted it connected to anything at all.

She couldn't see what Vanko did to the other two, but from the damage analyses flashing on her screen she had a pretty good idea of what went on. The voltage around Stark's suits' neck areas skyrocketed. Vanko was using those electric whips on them. Except these were much, much more refined. Twice as deadly.

"Come on, genius..." Natasha said to herself. "Think of something. Don't die when you just got your chest figured out..."

Stark didn't disappoint. The screens changed. Energy levels on both their repulsor rays steadily climbed. As she watched the red lines brim the meters she understood how they had demolished the Stark mansion.

A huge energy shockwave rippled rings of bright red from their spot a heartbeat later. Vanko's icon flashed rapidly from the attack's damage, then faded out all together. Gone.

Dead.

The adrenaline rushing through her drained from her veins, Natasha slumped back on the chair behind her and focused on breathing for a few moments. She massaged the ridge of her eyebrows and sighed.

Hogan, who was silent this entire time, spoke up.

"Rushman?... Or is it Romanoff now?"

She laughed. The shakiness in her voice didn't bother her. Something about laughing then unlocked and freed a weight off from her. "I'm a S.H.I.E.L.D operative, came here to watch Tony's balls."

His mouth fell open.

"Take me back to the Expo, we need to finish business."

"Yeah? Aren't you gonna run off now? Back to S.H.I.E.L.D? You know I'm kinda glad you're from S.H.I.E.L.D and not somewhere like the C-"

"Shut up. Or do you want me to drive?"


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably the only chapter in Clint's POV to accommodate the Thor parts.

"Barton, you sure?" The same agent turned around to say to him, waving his hand of cards.

"You've asked me five times already, Lans."

"It's four hours to Roswell. You're really just gonna sit in a corner of the Quinjet?"

The agent beside Lans slapped his arm for him to make his move, and he turned back to his card game.

What fun were jet rides when you couldn't pilot?

The secondhand smoke in the small cavity surely would've suffocated the fifteen or so agents on board, if one of them hadn't, against protocol, turned on the air filter. Still the acrid smell lingered. Mixed with the hyena noises these agents had dissolved to, Clint wanted to jump off the jet.

At long last they landed. Coulson met them once they walked out into the outskirts of Roswell. "accommodations are minimal, agents. You guys are free for the rest of the day. I'm leaving you one truck; sleep in it if you want. Find a motel. Someone's doorsteps. Whatever. Tomorrow they'll bring in research and equipment. Drive them over to the crater site."

At that he took the only car they had and drove off.

The next morning another jet landed with the equipment Coulson had mentioned. In groups or alone, the agents reunited at the meeting place and hauled everything into the truck. Then it was on to Puente Antiguo.

The sleepy town was flatter than the blades of Natasha's fancy daggers and a tenth as sharp. The neighborhood they passed by looked on the verge of sleep, moved along by the occasional older residents and families. Business—what little of it existed—drawled, the houses crouched in squat, identical boxes the same color as the distant plains, and dust clouded the air with the slightest disturbance of feet, so when S.H.I.E.L.D paraded through the streets they went in a sandstorm, and for a minute or two drew the attention of the town's not very attentive residents.

A hammer had enough impact for a _crater?_ Clint didn't believe it until the seventy yards diameter met him, dipping down in a steep slope. A number of S.H.I.E.L.D trucks and personnel were already present. The agents stopped the truck and began to unload its contents. Coulson waved his walkie-talkie to Clint.

"I'll take a few of your group with me to fetch some research," Coulson said. "You take the others and help our people clear out the locals, then set up perimeter and base."

"Will do."

"I'm putting you in charge here. Make sure everything runs smoothly."

Coulson waved to a facility truck and a few vans, and rode off with four of the Malibu agents. Clint turned to the other expectant faces around him and cursed. 

A strong cocktail of warm beer, cigarette smoke, urine and barbecue invaded his nostrils as he skidded down the slope. The grimy, flannel-shirted locals stared. One of them pointed at the bow across his back.

"You're Clint Barton?" A voice said behind him.

Clint turned around. "That's me." A man—a neanderthal, more like— loomed over him, what, seven feet tall?

"Name's Charles. Charles Andersen. Head of security. Help me get these men out of here. They're dragging out our operation."

Though it didn't look like he needed much help. With a voice like thunder and the thick baton in his hand he only had to walk around to herd the civilians out of the crater. When they didn't pick up their trash he threw it at them, empty cans, barbecue sauce bottles, even an icebox.

While he went about that, Clint approached the center of the crater and crouched down next to the hammer. A blocky, weathered thing, it was, bordered with intricate patterns, the handle and strap bound in red leather.

Charles' shadow cloaked over him. "It won't budge no matter what, those crazy bitches hooked it to a pick-up truck. The whole back part flew off but the thing stayed. It's like magic."

"There is no magic."

"Yeah? Well I don't know what then, 'cause that's not normal."

As the morning faded into noon a mesh fencing went up around the edge of the crater. The facility itself consisted of tunnels of metal rings, draped over with flimsy sheets of plastics. These tunnels snaked and intersected, and at their ends they attached wheeled-in cabins. The hammer lay undisturbed in the heart of the constructions, observed from three levels of scaffolding around an eight-feet radius.

Coulson came back with his agents and started to unload their cargo: a telescope, at least a dozen strong boxes, backpacks, binders, and some other junk from the back of a van. One agent pulled out a battered iPod.

"Where'd you go, a goodwill?" Clint asked.

"An astrophysicist."

"Did you just... _take_ everything they have?"

"They have all the data and images on the wormhole the hammer came through from, we have to start our research somewhere."

At night the tunnels glowed like fluorescent lights. Vehicles drove around like they've been doing all day, guards patrolled the perimeter. Inside the people didn't rest, either. Every person capable of reading a graph on a screen and understanding a few scientific terms gathered data on the hammer and the local atmospheric changes.

Clint stood on the roof level of the central platform. The night breeze had chilled his skin and left his lips chapped, and his jacket was little help. The sky flashed weak threads of lightning, but the thunder never came.

He turned to face the dots of people skittering around, the almost invisible wall of mesh fencing, the mountains beyond, then at the truck by the main building where they stored the firearms. Coulson had convinced him to leave his bow there since it wasn't his usual collapsible one, and the compound was too bulky to be dragged around. But then why would they specifically call _him_ to this operation if he couldn't carry his weapons?

Another ten minutes passed before the crackling and writhing of electricity came again. The moon illuminated weakly a few clumps of dark clouds. The wind grew insistent. Clint zipped up his jacket and crossed his arms over his chest.

A high screech jerked from an alarm behind him. He turned. The alarm lights pulsed red against pale plastic. Security breach on the first night. Looked like the hammer lived up to its fuss and attention.

Clint stayed put, scanned the murky darkness through his night vision goggles and tried to single out the invader. There, slinking behind a supply truck, sprinting across the tracks when the road cleared, came his suspect. When a sliver of light spilled onto the man's form a lock of blond hair flashed. He clambered from the dirt onto a tunnel entrance.

A few bodies clashed against him from the other end. The man met them head on and threw them down; tumbled down the guards coming at him like a pile of puppies. The plastic blurred out most of the action, but Clint could still track his movements. The man steadily advanced towards the center of the facility.

The long-overdue thunder joined the lightning, and once it started it refused to stop. A drop of rain plopped onto Clint's nose, then another on his right cheek. A downpour followed within seconds. The powdery dirt absorbed the water and turned into brownie mix.

"I need eyes up high, _with a gun._ " Coulson said into his radio.

About time. Clint climbed down the railing, maneuvering the lower levels like a ladder, and tore out the structure. Mud splattered onto his pants. Once he scrambled up the armory truck he looked over his options. Coulson had specified a gun, but soon as Clint spotted his bow...

Clint sprinted for the crane bucket outside and threw in the bow before hopping on himself. A _riiiiiiip_ behind him. He turned. Gaping hole on the side of a tunnel. One of their men sprawled in the mud. The crane began to lift, and his little cage wobbled and swayed. Clint adjusted the bow in his hand and waited.

"Barton, talk to me." He could barely make out Coulson's voice.

Clint nocked his arrow and drew the bowstring. "You want me to slow him down, sir?" He aimed at the structure below, waiting for the trespasser. "Or are you sending in more guys for him to beat up?"

"I'll let you know."

The man was a few feet from the edge of the platform now. A shadow charged at him from the side—a security guard—and threw a punch at the blond's chest, knocking him to the floor.

Out of all things, the intruder looked _amused._ He staggered up and returned the punch to the guard's jaw. The back-and-forth blows continued. The guard hurled him out the end of a tunnel, bringing the fight out to the open.

Clint swung around on his perch and aimed for the man's leg. Coulson might not want him dead.

The two men rolled around the mud. The security had him in a headlock. The man elbowed him in the stomach until he let go. The blond pushed away from him. They scrambled to their feet. When the guard came into range the intruder kicked with his legs and brought them both to the ground. He added another kick to the guard's head before smiling in glee.

"You better call it Coulson, cause I'm starting to root for this guy."

The man tore open the plastic covering fencing the hammer and stood over it.

"Last chance, sir." Clint drew his arrow back.

"Wait. I want to see this."

The man gripped the hammer's leather handle and pulled. Not surprisingly, it didn't give. He braced himself there for minutes, growling and howling as he tried to lift the thing, and after realizing that he couldn't do it, he tilted his face up to the sky with a look of hurt and disbelief, almost as if he couldn't fathom the reason why. Did he even notice Clint hanging there in the crate?

Clint put down his bow and signaled the crane driver to drop him down.

He looked at the stranger one last time before he disappeared out of view. His kneeling figure was submissive, the fight cleared out of him.

Morning came with a cloudy sky that draped low to the ground. Rain evaporated from the sand. The holes in the tunnels were patched and the guards forced onto a double shift drifted like ghosts.

A "Dr. Selvig" came to retrieve the intruder (who apparently went by the name Donald Blake), claiming him as his colleague and one of the scientists S.H.I.E.L.D had looted the research from. Selvig's story was unconvincing to say the least and Blake's ID turned out to be a fake. Coulson permitted them to go anyway, but not without a few shadows to monitor their activities.

Coulson rushed out shortly after noon with half a dozen cars. Later, one of the vehicles came back and an agent hurried inside. Agent Blake and a few others came out with him and they took several more cars. They drove below Clint's platform. Blake's window rolled down.

"Barton, in the car with me." He pointed a thumb at the backseat.

Clint swung his legs off the railing. "Emergency, sir?"

"Something like that, I'll explain on the road."

Once he was in the car, however, he received no explanations. Blake chattered to Tomson beside him and Clint more or less picked up the story: the monitors had detected another site with the same energy readings northwest of their camp, and Coulson wanted to investigate.

They arrived fifteen miles later. There was no crater this time; instead, an intricate circle of designs burned into the earth. White-clad researchers flocked around it. Coulson squatted down beside them.

"Instructions, sir?" Clint said behind him.

"Keep an arrow nocked and your eyes open. Don't shoot unless I say so," Coulson said, and resumed his previous conversation.

A half hour passed. A dark cluster of clouds gathered above them, growing by the second. The agents tilted their guns up. They looked more of a threat than anything else at the moment.

The clouds began to spiral down. An urgent breeze pulled at everyone's feet.

"Coulson..." Clint gripped his bow tighter.

Around him, a few agents darted their eyes between the sky and the group by the research spot, waiting for a command. The thick tube continued to descend. A fine mist of disturbed sand spun and settled into the creases of clothes. Clint zipped his jacket to the top and covered his nose with the collar.

Coulson walked over to him while keeping his eyes on the sky. "On _my_ command." He patted Clint's bow.

The swirling storm touched ground a heartbeat later. The turbulence it created threatened to topple everyone over. Clint squinted against the flying debris and pulled his bowstring back.

The dust unveiled a giant, humanoid figure, standing in the dust clouds, its metal covering glinting silver in the sun.

The agent next to Clint inhale sharply.

No one dared move. Gun barrels trained on the newcomer.

Coulson came out from the car he sheltered behind and broke the stalemate.

"Is that one of Stark's?" Sitwell asked, and handed him a megaphone.

"I don't know. That guy never tells me anything." Coulson took the megaphone and walked into the open. Sitwell followed a step behind.

The stranger clunked towards them, its footsteps heavy and loud.

"Hello. You're using unregistered weapons technology," Coulson said into the megaphone. "Identify yourself."

The silver armor froze at the sound of his voice. The piece over its face slid down. The entire suit flared an intense orange. Like flames. Pushing to bypass the gaps between armor plates.

Clint's muscles twitched in alarm.

The machine resumed its walk, picking up its pace. Coulson stumbled back.

"AGENTS!"

The crew scattered with panicked cries. A beam of fire shot out at the closest car and reduced it to a rain of sparks. Then it turned to a car at the back. Anyone inside had no chance of living.

Clint stayed put, aimed at what he thought was a chink in the armor and fired the arrow. It lodged between the metal plates as he expected. The explosives went off. What was not expected, however, was the way the pieces came together again after the explosion had unraveled them. He released another arrow and the same thing happened. The plating stuck like magnets.

The glowing head turned in his direction. Clint scrambled to get out of the way. This was beyond even him now. His attacks as much damage as a pinprick.

The automaton fired. The car behind him exploded to pieces. A searing heat followed and tore at the back of his jacket as he ran. Fire burned through the flame-resistant material like tissue paper. Water welled up in his eyes from the pain and he dodged flying car parts through blurred vision.

A dismantled car door slammed into his back. He fell face first to the ground. The familiar sensation that came with a damaged bone hit him. Rackets of pain pulsed through his torso and he gasped into the sand, struggling for a breath of air.

The vehicles perished in less than a minute, all turned into charred, smoking junk.

Clint held still. Back trauma was bad; he could still feel his lower half and he intended to keep on feeling. He slowly twisted his neck around to look over the mess on his shoulders. The bloody, mottled skin stung. His jacket and shirt flapped in shreds. This was _not_ how he had expected this assignment to turn out.

The heavy steps of their attacker faded, replacing it the hissing of broken vehicles. The sharp smell of gas and smoke lingered in the air.

Clint swallowed the bile in his throat and waited for someone to find him, if there's anyone left at all.

"Barton? Can you hear me?" A few pairs of footsteps thumped against the ground. A shadow fell over his face and he rolled his eyes up. Coulson knelt next to him, miraculously unscathed. "I told you not to shoot. You should have ran while you had time!"

Clint kept his mouth shut and stared at the ground.

Coulson sighed. "We'll get you someone. Don't move."

Sitwell crouched down next. "Anything broken? Or is it just the burns?"

"My back's busted for sure. Maybe my ribs." The grit got into his mouth and he raised his head to spit it out. "Who else is breathing?"

Sitwell looked around. "You, me, Coulson, Blake, Bryson, Kennette, and Lans."

"That's all?" He gave a humorless chuckle that sent a jolt of pain through his lungs. They had thirty people less than ten minutes ago. "Did you check the bodies?"

"There's none." Sitwell shook his head. "If you're not alive you're turned to ashes."

"Damn."

Communication took a while to get up. Even then the signal was choppy. Leaving Clint with the newly arrived paramedics, Coulson drove one of the fresh cars with the unharmed agents and sped towards the direction their attacker had headed in.

The medics lifted Clint onto a stretcher as carefully as they could, but still the movement made him squeeze his eyes shut. Once settled, they fed an IV into his veins to take out the pain. Another tube dripped a pouch of light-yellow liquid. A nurse flitted about his arms and cut his shirt loose with a few snips of her scissors.

"Hey." She greeted when she saw Clint staring at the solution, and coated his skin with a sticky clear gel from a tube. "We're gonna keep you in the stretcher to minimize further damage until they can get you proper medical attention."

"I'm fine. You can't put me in a hospital anyway."

"You're returning to Central." The nurse wiped down the scratches on his face with a warm towel and turned to attend to another person.

—

Coulson visited him in the infirmary a few hours later. "Guess who our friend Donald is?" He asked, and handed Clint a cup of water.

"Who?"

"Not from this planet. I knew from his looks that he wasn't your regular guy, but I didn't expect to see him flying around the sky."

"What happened to that giant metal thing?" The drugs had muddled his thinking enough for him to pay no attention to what Coulson had just said.

"It's called the Destroyer. Thor—that's Donald, killed it, deactivated it. Whatever. I sent people to bring it back."

Clint nodded. "Are they gonna be regular visitors?"

"It's likely. We need to better prepare ourselves when they do. It's not if they'll attack anymore. It's _when_."

"What's Fury going to do about it? Line up his Avengers?"

"Actually, we're switching the focus to weapons against future invasions." Coulson pulled two packs of donuts from his coat pocket and dangled them in front of him. "Chocolate or vanilla? I've been trying to decide."

"Vanilla."

Coulson handed him the package and ripped open his own while humming a little tune.

"Did you _just buy this?_ " Clint asked.

"Nope. Yesterday while I was filling up gas. I beat up two robbers."


	7. Chapter 7

_Yesterday._

Back to Malibu. Potts allowed no objections. Within an hour after the Expo attack she rounded everyone, Natasha included, into a jet and that was that. She's "had her suspicions" was her only response regarding Natasha's agent identity. After that it was back to boss-and-subordinate.

On the jet, Natasha sipped a scalding cup of tea, opened up Tetris on her laptop and played in the dark, her eyes stinging with the contrast of the bright, colorful screen. The quiet hum of the engine and the steam from the cup tickling her nose provided some of the most lavishing post-mission hours she'd ever had.

Stark padded into her compartment in fluffy slippers and watched her game from the doorway.

Natasha flicked her eyes down to the clock display, 3:27 a.m.

"Can't sleep?" He asked after a few minutes.

She ignored him and focused on her game.

"Do you always walk around like a human armory?"

"..."

"I'll take that as a yes. Say, that's a really high score. How long have you been playing?"

"..."

"Fine, I'll get to the point. I wanted to... to thank you..." He sounded like he was pulling chains out of his throat. "...for what you did for me and Rhodey back there."

Natasha paused her game. How often did one hear Tony Stark thank someone not once, but twice in a day?

"It wasn't much," she said.

"Yeah, I wish I can say that. You know how awful it is having your best friend attack you? I mean I know Rhodey wasn't in control at the time but that's not the point." He rubbed his eyes. "It's just... I never thought someone I love might try to kill me. You get me?"

She held the steaming cup under her nose. "No. Sorry."

He paused. Natasha took the chance to unpause her game and keep playing.

"Not to be rude or anything," Stark started. "But—"

"You _are_ being rude."

"You. Are a hunk of ice. You know what? Someday shit like this should happen to you. We'll see if you can keep that face up."

"Uh-huh."

"Fifty bucks."

"No."

"C'mon, what can it hurt?"

"Every bone in your body."

"You know I can disable that laptop this second? It's not hard. JARVIS can erase all data and wipe you off the scoreboards."

"Fine! Now stop distracting me!"

The next morning in Malibu, Stark and Potts set alight an argument that rang through the mansion. One moment Potts chased Stark on some important matter that he was ignoring, the next he's wheeling on her. It was like they hurled an invisible ball between them, and when the ball bounced off they moved to a different location to continue their brawl. At last they settled onto a couch across from where Natasha worked, typing up her recruitment assessment on Stark for Fury.

"C'mon, Pep. Stark Tower. Brand new. What's not to love?" Stark whined.

"I don't think I should be allowing you to ruin anoth—"

"Ok, look at it this way. If we move, you can better supervise the Expo reparations."

Potts laughed sarcastically. " _I_ can supervise? I _resigned,_ Tony."

"And you know what else I have in mind? I'm planning on this, uh..." Stark raised a hologram on the tablet in his hand. "...this new model of the arc reactor to power the building. 100% environmentally friendly."

Potts rotated the hologram with a flick of her wrist. "Why not just build one here?"

"Why build it here if we have a skyscraper in New York with my name on it? Think of the amount of people that's going to notice. You want something sweet for the press? You have it."

Natasha extended her paragraph on textbook narcissism in the report.

"The tower's not even finished yet." Potts shook her head.

"I can help with construction. Finish it even sooner. You can contribute if you want, whatever works for you."

She was silent for a while, thinking.

"You better be committed. I don't even know why I'm agreeing t—"

Stark cut her off with a big wet kiss. Potts pushed him away. "We have other people present," she reminded him and wiped her mouth.

"Fury's scum don't count."

"Shut your mouth." Potts turned to Natasha. "I'm sorry, you know how he is."

Natasha looked up and shrugged.

"Whoa whoa whoa. Now it's _Natasha?_ Pepper I don't under—" The door clicked open. "JARVIS, you need to do better than that," he muttered and stood up.

"You." Fury pointed at him. "With me. Debriefing."

"Yeah, about that, I don't have time. I'm flying back to Manhat—"

"Fabulous. Take Agent Romanoff with you when you leave. Romanoff, you finished the file?"

"Almost, Director."

"Good. Now come along, Stark, I don't have all day." Fury raised his briefcase and started to walk out.

"What? I thought I'm done with her."

"She's just going to hitch a ride back to S.H.I.E.L.D Central."

Too stingy to spare her a jet. What else did she expect?

"It's perfectly fine, Director," Potts replied instead.

"Good. Stark?" Fury angled his good eye at Stark and beckoned him with a finger.

Stark groaned and followed him out.

* * *

Upon Potts' insistence, Natasha joined her and Stark for lunch on the plane. In the stuffy dining compartment Potts shouted instructions at Stark in the kitchen. "Bread's in the lower cabinet. No no—the one next to it. There's strawberry jam? Get rid of it. I don't want to see strawberry jam."

Once Stark came out with the sandwiches Potts turned her focus to Natasha.

"How do you like working for S.H.I.E.L.D?"

"Ok."

"How long?"

"Four years, five?"

"What did you do before that?"

"..." Natasha picked at the crust of her sandwich.

Stark ignored them and watched the TV screen on the wall on mute, flipping the channels around, until he paused at a picture of a rubbled town.

"New Mexico, huh? Isn't that where Coulson went?" He patted Potts' arm for attention and turned on the volume.

Natasha's eyes snapped up.

**Puente Antiguo, NM Ravaged By Extraterrestrial Attack.**

Wasn't that where Clint went?

She fumbled for her phone and dialed Coulson's number.

He didn't pick up.

She put her phone away and looked back at the T.V screen, but it had flashed on to the next news story. Extraterrestrial attack. That couldn't be a coincidence. S.H.I.E.L.D was a magnet for anomalies, and Coulson not picking up made her hand twitch more than the condition of that town.

"You think S.H.I.E.L.D was involved in that?" Potts asked carefully.

The Target commercial dog bounced around the screen. Natasha nodded. "They just keep quiet."

Potts ebbed into silence, choosing instead to go over the plans for the tower. Stark continued shuffling the channels. If only he would turn on the volume so Natasha could listen to something other than the thoughts in her head.

About an hour of National Geographic's silent giraffes and gazelles later her phone vibrated. She slipped it from her pocket and put it to her ear.

"I just sent Barton back to Central's medical department. Keep an eye on him."

"Does this have anything to do with what I saw on the news?"

"Most likely."

"What happened to Barton?"

"He was an idiot. Sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner, we've had a lot of signal problems."

"Wait—"

He hung up.

She couldn't sit still.

"Stark, any chance of speeding up? I'm in a hurry."

"Why?"

"I have babysitting to do."

"Your babysitting terrifies me."

"Can you speed up or not?"

"No, I can't. I can get you a car once we land, though, if that helps."

The car Stark lended her was on its last drops of gas.

Of course, why didn't she see it coming? It was the perfect revenge, perfect _comfort_ for a man with his pride toppled, starry-eyed to the agent with the code names: Notary; Hey You; Lady; Is Your Name Natalie? that lurked under his own roof, typing more than just business letters and contacting more than just corporation ran out. Stark doing charity for her? If she hadn't had her mind halfway on S.H.I.E.L.D she would have declined.

Rush Hour rammed into her schedule like a speeding train. Trapped in the crawling traffic for hours, by the time Natasha arrived at S.H.I.E.L.D's doors the evening had long beaten her to the race. Mood tainted and battered, she headed for the infirmary, stopping at each door until she found the name tag she was after.

Natasha cracked the door open and peeked in.

"What the hell did you do?"

Clint raised both his hands over his head, an entire arm's worth of IVs flapping as he did. "Sorry."

"Put your hands down." She dropped her backpack by the door and dragged a chair over to his bed, its legs scoring the floor with a _screeeeech._ "I heard you were being an idiot. I can tell."

"Yes, and you're angry. Usually that comes after concern."

A back brace cocooned his midsection, bunching up the shirt beneath. "What did you break?" She pointed at it, then swung her finger up to the bandages slinging over his shoulder and down his arm. "Are those acid burns or fire? Or some weird alien—"

"Fire. Just fire. Fine, alien fire but it's still fire. Spine's messed up, cracked my L2 and L3. Hair burnt off at the back." He dipped his head down to show her. Pink, blotchy skin spread from the top of his neck and up.

Natasha sank her hand into his hair. "Do you feel ok?"

"Yeah, fine."

"Good." She parked her chair up against the bed, pulled the pillow behind his back closer to her and mashed her face into it. Her neck would pay for this position tomorrow, but she didn't care. "Coulson said to keep an eye on you."

" _Sleeping_ doesn't count."

Yet his hand weaved into her hair anyway, and she focused on the pressure on her scalp and couldn't keep her eyes shut, instead staring into the white linens. Even when his hand fell away and he fell asleep, she held still, and listened to his breaths for the rest of the night.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically the P.E.G.A.S.U.S facility is supposed to be in the Mojave Desert, but for this fic's purposes I'm changing it to the Adirondacks.

After a small nap that she had managed to take towards the early morning, Natasha left before Clint woke up and went outside to get them breakfast. Like anyone else with working taste buds, they avoided S.H.I.E.L.D food at all times. If she had decided to trade a lazy trip to the cafeteria for another hour of rest he would have made her eat that sludge with him. Her going out to hunt for a decent meal worked out as a mutually beneficial system.

In the bustling cafe a few blocks away from S.H.I.E.L.D, she waited until the cashier called her (fake) name and grabbed the paper bag from the counter in one hand, her coffee in the other. Then she navigated through the morning rush of people back to Central, taking treacherous sips of the boiling liquid that burned her tongue when she accidentally shook the cup.

Clint was already awake when she returned, talking to Coulson. Natasha tossed the paper bag onto his lap. "Sorry, Coulson. Didn't buy your share."

"It's ok. I had delivery. And um, I'll be going now." He gave Clint a weird look and hurried out of the room.

She sat down on the chair she had from yesterday. Clint tore apart the paper bag into a flat sheet to catch the drips from the sandwich inside. He crammed in every mouthful like he had a time limit, and when he finished he reached for the cup of coffee in her hands.

"I bought one cup for a reason, Clint. There's water next to you."

"Forget that." He dropped his hand and leaned in to her. "Coulson told me about the Expo."

"Kinda guessed that would be Hammer's M.O. Didn't benefit him or us that it backfi—"

"Natasha."

The heat of the cup made her palms itch. She took a sip and swished it in her mouth.

"Did what happened upset you?"

"He's dead. There's—"

"That's not what I'm asking. Yes or no?"

"No."

He shook his head at her, but didn't question further. Clint would never question further. He wouldn't dare claw an open wound that he tried to cover himself, seeming to know there existed some barrier, some electric fence at a certain point in her history that he never ventured near, much less touch. Yet although the prospect of a thorough questioning had no possibility of sprouting, she got up and left anyway. She couldn't sit there any longer that flaring lie around her.

The training room was empty, quiet save the tick of a clock high on a wall. Natasha opened her locker and unlidded the case of knives inside. It had almost been instinctual on her part to go here, and she never thought extensively on the reason why because the irony of it all would slap her in the face. Here she was avoiding a conversation on her past just so she could return to it by herself. Those knives stretched far before S.H.I.E.L.D, before the freelance assassinations. They've been there for as long as she could remember.

Today she couldn't bear to throw them.

—

Maria Hill's look of surprise was priceless when Natasha asked her for work.

"I am not authorized to assign you anything, that's Agent Coulson's job." Hill narrowed her eyes.

"No, I'm not asking for an assignment. I just want something to do. Like an errand if you may."

She rubbed her chin and nodded. "Wait here, I'll talk to Bryson." She crossed the room, then beckoned Natasha to come forth and shifted so she could see what they were looking at: a picture of a giant plated armor labeled "The Destroyer".

"This is the mechanism that flattened the New Mexico town. Director Fury is sending people to retrieve it, but we're not the only ones with eyes on this thing. We're going to need whatever defenses we have to make sure it gets to HQ without trouble." She paused to let Natasha think about it.

"What's the approximate duration?" Natasha asked.

"A day at most. There's a follow-up if you want to take it. Bryson, get his picture."

The image changed to that of an older man. "Erik Selvig" took up half of the screen.

"This is one of the astrophysicists that studied the local weather changes. Fury wants him shipped out to one of our facilities to aid the research of—" Hill typed in a command to summon a third image. "—this."

A blue cube glowed with energy. The Tesseract.

"And I'll be the escort?" Natasha wasn't surprised at the simplicity of the job. After all, she had no proper authorization.

"Yes. He's going to Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S, preferably within the next day or two."

Two days sounded fair, but she had Clint to think about. "Can I give you my decision later?"

"We scheduled 10:40 jets. Just show up outside if you're coming. And you know, I thought Coulson would keep you occupied better than this."

Her steps and spirit lifted considerably by the new task at hand, Natasha returned to Clint. A few nurses had manifested around his bedside in her absence, changing the dressings on his burns and whatnot. She approached and took the roll of bandages from one of them. "I can finish the rest."

The nurses left. Natasha sank down onto the side of his bed and continued bandaging where they had left off, winding the white cloth round and round his arm.

"Back so soon?" Clint asked, his gaze testing.

"Don't get used to it, I'm leaving in 20."

"What?"

"I got myself a stint." Natasha threw the old gauze into the trash and poured a pitcher of water over the burns, catching and wiping the drips with a towel underneath.

He forced a smile and raised his hand to her cheek, and the movement spilled water onto the bed.

"I don't have to go if you'd rather I stay here." She swatted his hand away and patted his arm dry, coated it with a layer of Silvadene. Coulson  _did_  tell her to look out for him, so technically she went against orders by leaving base. If Hill knew she had specific instructions to stay she would never have offered her the job.

"Your choice. I'm not going anywhere."

Natasha snipped the roll of gauze off from the knot and put it in back on the tray. She glanced at the clock on the wall. Ten more minutes before the jets leave.

"Bye." She brushed the invisible dust from her hands.

Clint pressed a kiss to her cheek, more solid and more real than his first. For a second she considered staying.

* * *

_New Mexico._

Hill stood with the rest of her party in the sun. Natasha waited a few feet away with crossed arms for her to finish instructing the others. As soon as Hill finished she nodded at Natasha and led her to the gate. "Stay close to the clean up crew when they're bringing the Destroyer in. Look for anyone suspicious. You know what to do."

They had moved the Destroyer to the base set up at the original crater site. Coulson hadn't shown up there, a huge relief for Natasha. In fact all the senior agents were gone. Hill said Fury had called a meeting with them but wouldn't tell what for.

At the original hammer site, the crew broke camp and shipped off the supplies. A familiar face showed up near the main research cabin. The man she saw on the computer earlier fumbled with a bundle of power cords straddling the space between the cabin and a beat-up van. A younger woman that she didn't recognize helped him untangle and wrap up the cords. A second girl loaded cardboard boxes into the van.

Natasha approached. "Erik Selvig?" She said to the man's back.

He didn't hear, and the girl helping him had to pat his shoulder and point him to her direction. Selvig turned around, dazed.

"...Yes?"

"Are you authorized to remove this equipment?" Natasha motioned towards their half-filled vehicle.

"They were ours to begin with. Your people took them from us." The woman behind him rebutted. She pushed her glasses up and crossed her arms.

"Darcy,  _quiet._ " Selvig chastised, then turned back to Natasha. "Yes, we had permission from Agent Coulson to take these. And you are...?"

"I'm here by Director Fury's orders to collect you. You're leaving by day's end."

"Excuse me?"

"I'll be back later to pick you up. If you attempt anything funny, I will use any method applicable to get you into a jet, so it would make both our lives much easier if you cooperate." Natasha spun her taser gun for emphasis.

Eventually the senior agents returned to help with the move. The second Coulson left his car he headed for where Natasha surveyed a team of workers, and she had no option but to face up to him.

"Romanoff, why are you here?"

"Agent Hill asked me to come." Not a complete lie.

"What about Barton?"

She snorted. "Not here, of course."

"Don't play with me. I told you to stay wi—"

"You can't expect me to follow him like a dog. He's fine where he is, Coulson."

Coulson didn't press further, but the look on his face told her she would pay for this later. Whether that would count as a disobedience mark on her files or a more solid penalty she paid no mind.

Natasha rerouted to supervise the exiting vehicles filing out of the fenced premises in a single-file. An agent stood by the gate, checking off their cargo from a clipboard.

An explosion went off from the far side of the exit. Natasha whipped around. One of the trucks went up in flames. Then another one, close by. Must be those looters Hill warned her about. The guards abandoned their posts. Natasha was about to follow them when it hit her: all the trucks with valuables had either been driven away or were in line by the exit. Those exploded trucks held  _nothing._

She turned on her heels and sprinted after the truck with the Destroyer.

The black vehicle rolled toward the gates. A hand popped out of the window and shot the guards before they could pull their triggers. The gunshots redirected everyone's attention. Shouts behind her. The rogue truck's wheels crushed the dead men in its way. Out in the open it increased speed. Its fifteen-feet difference from her would soon exponentialize.

Natasha pulled a length of cord from her suit and threw the attached grappling hook at the top of the truck. It caught and held. She pressed a button on her belt. The rope retracted, yanking her off the ground and flinging her onto the top of the truck. She released the hook and let the cord spin back into her belt.

A bullet penetrated the roof and missed her by inches. More came, insistent on hitting her. Natasha ran for the head of the truck. Gun in hand, she crouched down and peeked into the window. The driver had on S.H.I.E.L.D uniform. She knocked the gun from his hand and put her own to his head.

"Stop the truck."

The man looked at her, his expression more fed-up than anything. "If you say so," he said.

He pressed a button on the controls. A red light blinked.

Natasha flung herself off the truck.

The explosion chased her. She hit the ground hard on her left shoulder, and gritting her teeth from the pain, rolled away and onto her feet.

Glowing debris like embers showered down. The truck's remains scattered over a thirty-feet radius. Glistening pieces of bloody flesh mingled with the ash and sand. In the heart of it all, the Destroyer laid on its side, still gleaming and whole. Bless its durability.

The S.H.I.E.L.D cars caught up. The first load of agents fanned out amongst the ruins. Coulson jogged to Natasha.

"Are you alright?" He asked.

She smeared the blood on her cheek that a flying shard had painted. "Fine. But this can't be all, Coulson. That truck was rigged to blow."

"Did you get anything out of the driver?"

She shook her head. "No, but he wore agent clothes. You might want to check the rest of your boys."

A buzz in the horizon. Black dots approached in the sky.

"Those are not ours, are they?" Natasha squinted.

The attack that shot down answered her question. Within seconds the enemy jets hovered overhead. She aimed for the engines on the closest one and fired, bringing the aircraft down. The rest refocused fire on her. She ducked behind a piece of the blown-up truck. Someone shot a wing and another jet tumbled in the air, then detonated in a cloud of smoke. On the ground, the fallen jet went off at the same time. The rest of the flock turned and flew off.

Natasha scuttled out from her hiding place and hurried to Coulson, who was rounding up everyone.

"I need Quinjets tracking down the three enemy jets that retreated, and one cargo aircraft at my location within a half-hour. We need the load out of here quick as we can," he spoke into his walkie-talkie while counting off the agents lined up in front of him.

"Self-destruction. No markings. Whoever's behind this is very meticulous, Coulson." Natasha stared at the charred heaps of metal. "They'll play light and shadow. Whatever it takes to stay under."

"We'll still find out."

"You want me to sift out more double-agents?"

"I'll take care of that. I need you to bring Selvig. If they're after the Destroyer chances are they wouldn't mind a genius brain for a raid-one-get-one-free."

Natasha took one of the cars and headed back to base. Hill must have had the same idea that Coulson did, and posted a flock of guards around the petrified-looking scientists, who huddled at the back of their van.

"Dr. Selvig, with me." Natasha stopped a few feet away from them.

"So soon? What's going on?"

"We're under attack, so unless you want hostiles shipping you off, get in the car."

The pesky one, Darcy, sucked in her cheeks to stifle a laugh. Natasha realized the irony in her words.

"Well, you still didn't explain what—"

"I'll explain this much: walk, or drop." She ground her gun into his temple.

The two girls behind him went rigid.

"Alright," Selvig stuttered. "I'll gather my things."

"We don't have time for that. Get in the car."

He nodded and stumbled towards said vehicle. She trailed the gun down to his back and used it to push him forward. He crumpled into the backseat and waved to the women.

"Jane, Darcy, I'll see you soon." Selvig's voice cracked.

They waved back, just barely.

Coulson was overlooking the extraction when she returned. Selvig huffed when he saw him, and slammed the car door before walking over.

"Your girls are worse than the boys," he said without humor.

Coulson turned. "Dr. Selvig, thank you for coming."

"Yeah, yeah. 'thank you for coming.' As if I had a choice with her pointing that gun at my brains."

"Agent Romanoff will be your escort until we get you to Director Fury."

"Escort? She'll turn me into pulp!"

"She's an efficient agent. I'll have you two board the Hudson-092."

Selvig gave Natasha a long, critical look before hobbling towards the jet, but didn't argue.

Coulson blocked her path with his clipboard before she could follow Selvig. "You mind him, I don't want you scaring his wits out. It's not a good impression."

"Why don't you listen to your own advice, then?"

* * *

That jab with Coulson must have awakened Selvig's ego. Sitting across from her in the jet, he looked her; looked at her like scrutinizing the believability of a statue in a wax museum. Natasha tucked the hair falling over her eyes behind her ear and returned his stare.

"If there's something you need, Dr. Selvig, then say it."

His gaze wavered. He leaned back on his seat. "Would you... be able to tell me our arrival time?"

"Twelve minutes max."

Selvig nodded. "And where exactly am I headed?" The words came out slow.

Natasha traced the scratch on her cheek with a finger and rubbed off tiny flakes of dried blood. "You'll know soon enough."

"What are you planning? Kill me somewhere else? Well we're going awfully far."

"I've got no plans for you other than to drop you off to the Director," she snapped.

When their Quinjet landed and the ramp lowered, a roar of engines and harsh wind whipped back her hair. Selvig followed behind her, stretching his neck out.

"C'mon, let's get you inside," Natasha said. Striding across the deserted deck she led him inside the aircraft. The door slid open with a swipe of her ID card and she pushed Selvig in, pressing a button on the wall to seal the door after her.

They went down a flight of stairs to penetrate beneath the flight deck. Selvig stopped at the first intersection, not knowing which path to take.

Natasha didn't often visit the Helicarrier, but she knew enough to get around. They had a few choices: to the left, on the same floor, was the control and interrogation rooms; the right held the elevators to the quarantines, detention, and research levels. It seemed appropriate to bring Selvig to the labs, but then like Hill said: secrecy until the last second.

"Turn right," she ordered, and they took the elevator down four levels. Walking out into the infirmary, she led him through the winding corridors until they reached the triple glass doors she looked for.

Selvig watched her press the codes. "Where are we?" His voice was high.

"Quarantines. I have to put you somewhere, and if I know one thing about S.H.I.E.L.D, it's that their security systems are stricter here than anywhere else in the ship. If you attempt to leave, well, you can't."

The last door opened. The smell of detergents was so strong Natasha could taste it, bitter on her tongue. She stopped by the closest empty room down the aisles. "Get in," she ordered Selvig.

He shuffled forth and peeked into the small window on the door, then entered.

Natasha locked the door as soon as his heels went in. Selvig spun around, his face filled up the window, his eyes two wobbling gray marbles. She offered no comfort and left.

After seeing The Destroyer's delivery to the Triskelion headquarters off, Coulson arrived at the Helicarrier. He and Natasha went to fetch Selvig for the last stretch of his transferal.

Coulson tried making conversation with the scientist on the flight to Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S while Natasha piloted; talked about S.H.I.E.L.D, sweetened it up at the right places and made Fury sound like a god. Whatever S.H.I.E.L.D needed Selvig for they needed it bad.

Selvig tried to loosen up, commenting and asking questions every once in a while. Multiple times he asked about Fury's intentions for taking him, and without fail Coulson would reroute the conversation, deepening the frown on Selvig's face.

The part of the Adirondack mountains they flew over held sparse vegetation compared to the lush green further away, a giveaway to the close-by "hidden" facility. Built atop flattened land and spanning over a mile in length, complete with trees and bushes on the sidewalks, it resembled a miniature city surrounded by the wilderness. The staff here stayed years on end without going back to civilization.

"Sir, I'm perching the bird. You'll want to wake him up." Natasha swung the jet starboard to line up with the runway. Selvig had fallen asleep.

After they touched down and handed the jet to the ground crew, Coulson drove them through the streets to the head of the facility.

"What is this place?" Selvig asked, looking out the window.

"You'll find out soon." Coulson still refused to give away anything, though the answer became progressively obvious. Selvig's forehead wrinkled and he gripped his jacket tighter when they passed a sign:  **JOINT DARK ENERGY MISSION: WESTERN DIVISION.**

Coulson parked in a half-full parking lot and led them into a building two blocks away: an incandescent-lighted, unassuming office room. A small old lady sat behind the desk, knitting.

Natasha lingered by the door with Selvig and let Coulson do the talking.

"You must be Agent Grace." Coulson unclipped the name tag from his coat to show the woman.

"Agent Coulson, huh? Director's down at 205. Who're your friends?" Her voice was raspy but strong.

"This is Agent Romanoff and Dr. Erik Selvig." He clipped the name tag back on.

"Ah, the brood from Puente Antiguo. Well go on ahead, he's expecting him." She pointed at Selvig with her knitting needle and resumed her work.

Coulson walked to the staircase behind her, bent to grip the edge of the lowest step and lifted. A quiet squeak, and the stairs flipped over to reveal an opening. He ducked into the other side, his party following close behind. An elevator took up the new room. Coulson pressed **205**  into the command board.

How low did they descend? Through the clear glass of the elevator the floors flashed by like a roll of film. What little Natasha glimpsed of them was smothered in darkness, dotted here and there with lights.

The elevator rumbled to a stop. When its doors opened the pungent smell of earth and chemicals swarmed in. A hot, stuffy heat draped over her. Murky blobs in the outline of employees wormed around, pushing carts and working the machinery. Guards stood at the corner of every corridor and room.

"S'place is like hell," Selvig muttered.

"This is as far as we can go, Doctor," Coulson said. "Just keep walking straight until you pass section 19A-5, then take a left." He smiled his customary smile and went back into the elevator.

Coulson turned to Natasha as soon as the doors closed. "I have someone to see. Wait at the front room for me, I'll be just a minute." He punched in  **128** , and stepped out when they came to his floor.

Resurfacing to the ground level, Natasha pushed the hidden door up and went back to the yellow room with the old woman. She sat down on one of the chairs in a corner.

After a while Grace spoke. "You know what they do down there, Agent Romanoff?"

Natasha looked back at her. Grace had settled her knitting onto the table before her and clasped her hands.

"Researching the Tesseract," Natasha answered. "Why?"

"Oh, just wondering. What with S.H.I.E.L.D letting you bring in Selvig I thought they'd tell you the full scope."

What full scope? The uneasy feeling she had about this entire, urgent operation washed back through Natasha. But before she could question Grace, Coulson came in the room.

"We'll be going, Agent Grace."

"Mhmm. Take care, Coulson, and don't get too excited."

"I'll try." Coulson's smile stretched wider.

As he herded Natasha out of the room, she looked back at Grace, who gave Natasha one last mysterious look before resuming her knitting.


	9. Chapter 9

Grace's words rang through Natasha's ears on the way back to New York.

Even when she returned to her own room and tried to sleep, they hummed at the back of her mind, relentless, until she couldn't stand it anymore. She needed a distraction. Ten minutes later she ended up in Clint's bed (empty; he was still chained to IVs and monitors in a stark white room two floors down), and there her thoughts quieted enough for her to rest. She didn't dwell on why. Why shake off one train of thought just so she could call up another?

When she woke some hours later, the crisp turn of a book page came somewhere from her left. Natasha held still. She let a slit of light into her vision, blinked, and extracted her hand from the warm cocoon of the blankets to slap onto the middle of Clint's book. In the case of an awkward situation, always act first to pretend you had planned it to turn out this way.

"You just slapped the face of an old Aztec stone sculpture." He wriggled the book from under her hand.

"And you need to stop reading travel guides."

Clint closed the book and tossed it onto the table behind him, switching it for a plastic cup that he then handed to her. Natasha sat up and gulped down the water. He wasn't going to ask her what she's doing in _his_ bed? Not even a tiny remark? The clock on the wall read 10:32 a.m. She couldn't remember the last time she had slept this late.

"Why are you out of Medical?" Natasha asked.

"Hmm. I wonder why." He faked a mystified expression.

She laughed. For some reason that dimmed the smile on his own face. Before she could ask what's wrong he spoke first, throwing her off:

"Nat, you up for a walk?"

Natasha blinked, chewing the rim of the cup.

"A walk. Y'know, outside and all." His fingers curled and uncurled with underlying tension.

Natasha shrugged. Clint probably had some stupid stunt planned. Medical would never clear him on his third day with fractured bones near the vitals. Coulson was nuts to let him get away with it.

Convinced that he was without proper authorization, she made them take the subway. She didn't want him busted before they made it outside for checking out a car. Clint complied easily enough.

The station was packed with the pushy, weekend crowd. They waited by a quieter part away from the clusters of people, where Natasha zipped up his jacket, more out of mental comfort than actual protection for letting him out of S.H.I.E.L.D while his bed in the infirmary was still warm.

"Where to?" she shouted, so he could hear her through the competitive, approaching roar of the train, and pulled him towards the closest opening door.

"Don't know."

"C'mon, what'd you read all those travel guides for then?"

"We're in New York, Nat. I don't need a travel guide to find my way around—"

"Well, just pick a place then!" She laughed, waited for the passengers to get off, then pulled him in with her, and they leaned against the door as soon as it closed—the train was packed full like a sheep pen. Natasha put her arm around his waist when the floor beneath began to move.

"Park?" Clint suggested. "It's nice out."

Central Park bustled with people, it being a sunny Saturday, with a gentle, swinging breeze to perfect the weather. Leaves rustled and birdsong rehearsed overhead, making for a pleasant walk under the trees. Clint was right. Nice was an understatement. A current of preschoolers darted, twisted, occasionally knocked into them, and Natasha would redirect them with a steering hand to their wriggling bodies. She could tell Clint held in a laugh every time it happened. Seeing him out with the sun tinting his skin and the wind tousling his hair, she realized how much she had missed him.

Wandering, they came upon the Bethesda Terrace and settled by the edge of its water fountain. Natasha skipped a handful of pennies into the water, to the envy of nearby children who in turn begged their parents for coins. Clint watched her, lost in thought now that the preschooler episode had ended. How could she feel good for once while he brooded beside her? Her mouth formed the start of a question, but he beat her to it with the same intention in mind.

"Look, Nat. What's been going on?"

Natasha shifted the pennies in her palm uneasily.

 _She_ was his problem.

Clint took her silence for stubbornness and repeated his question. Now that the stalemate broke he came more forcefully, more demanding. His gaze hardened into a glower, the last thing she expected.

"Natasha."

She couldn't stand him looking at her that way. She couldn't stand hearing her name so harsh on his tongue. Untrained and unprepared for this kind of confrontation, Natasha did the only thing she could think of and knew to do: she pinched her lips shut.

"I'm worried, Natasha. I'm worried about you. You don't tell me anything and I'm too much of a wimp to ask. I can't let you on like this anymore."

Natasha shivered despite the sun grilling her skin through her jeans. She grated her nail against a penny. _2008_ , the year read. She threw it high, so it caught the light and collided against the angel statue at the center of the fountain—smack on the left wing.

Clint shook her by her shoulder. "I'm serious, Natasha. This is not going to work—"

"What's this?" She found her voice, icier and sharper than his. "What's not going to work out?"

Their eyes were warnings flashing, wanting the other to back down first. Natasha didn't want it to get any messier. She could tell Clint thought the same, but the unyielding determination in his eyes told her he meant business.

"You know what happened." He reached for her.

She pulled away from him. What did he think, that she had a package deal stamped onto her forehead? She dropped the rest of her pennies into her pocket and rose, the relief and comfort she took from being with him long gone. She wanted to run. A cruel trick to run off on Clint when his condition guaranteed he'd never catch up, but he had forced her hand. Why did he have to bring things up when he knew how rare her better days were? Why bring them up at all?

"You can't get away from this, Natasha. Hiding won't fix anything." Clint raised his voice.

She walked faster. He didn't follow after her and couldn't, not in that shape. Natasha sent a silent thanks to his injuries, too racked up with blind fire to feel guilt.

She had the whole city at her disposal but couldn't think of where to go, so she wandered, tried to walk off the fume, spend her clenched jaws and tight fists on the ground she covered. The asphalt felt nonexistent beneath her shoes. She felt free-floating, like a smoldering spark drifting through the air, ready to ignite anything in her way. Time did little to dim that flame. When her phone buzzed in her pocket some time later she answered with a too-snappish "What?"

"Where are you?" Coulson snapped back.

"Out."

"With Barton?"

"Well, he's not at S.H.I.E.L.D, is he?"

"Break that attitude. I want you two back within an hour."

Within an hour? She wouldn't be prepared to go in two. Natasha hung up and resumed her wandering, though she lingered by the edge of Central Park, because no matter how much she told herself she didn't want to see Clint, she couldn't leave him behind.

The sun began to retreat. The blue veil of the sky kindled, then darkened into a charred sheet, rousing city lights to life. The trees in the park threw longer shadows onto the ground. The crowds thinned, evacuated in a constant stream until only a few joggers bobbed on the sidewalk. Natasha made her way back to the Bethesda Fountain. Clint had left, of course, but she didn't know where else to go.

Her contempt dissipated along with the sun and heat, until all that was left were the dark, shimmering water of the fountain and an emptiness in her stomach that wasn't from a lack of food.

The wind tugged at the ends of her cardigan. Natasha buttoned up and crossed her arms tight across her chest. She unlocked her phone, ignoring the dozen missed calls from Coulson, and opened the tracking program S.H.I.E.L.D installed. When Clint's location generated on the screen, she let out a pent-up breath. He didn't go far—just the bridge two-hundred yards away.

Slumped over that park bench at the far end of the bridge, the angle he twisted his spine in made her walk faster. Coulson would kill him—and her—for this. More her than him. When he was close enough to touch Natasha reached out and brushed her hand over his clammy forehead.

"C'mon, get up. Don't sleep here."

Clint raised his head and blinked.

She let him yank her down by her arm, hold her as tight as he wanted.

"I thought you left." He panted on her neck.

"I'm here." She ran her hands over his back gently. "I'm here. Let go, you're hurting yourself."

His head shook against her cheek. "I thought you left."

"Not so tight. You're hurting yourself, god dammit." She pried his fingers from her cardigan. The bastard, he snagged.

"I thought you left. You looked so pissed I thought you'd never want to see me again."

"I still am," she retorted, but it was just for show.

"I thought you left."

"Shut up. You know me better than that."

"Maybe I don't." Clint's grip tightened. "I'm going to ask you again, Natasha. What's been going on?"

"C'mon, get up." She tried to wriggle away.

"You heard me."

"I'll get you something warm to drink."

"Natasha."

"Fine. Ok. I get it, ok? " The words escaped before she could catch herself. Did she regret them? She couldn't decide.

Breaking their embrace, Natasha pulled his hood over his head and took his hands in hers. Ice against ice. She started to lead them towards the nearest path out the park, but Clint tugged her the other way, back across the bridge. She wanted to stop him, to pull him away, but he plowed on insistently.

He stood her in front of the same fountain they were at this morning, dug around his jean pockets, and pressed a coin into her palm. Natasha wanted to scoff at the absurdity of the action, but the earnest look he had on held her back.

"You dropped this."

"...Thanks?"

"It's an old one," he added, as if it meant the world.

Natasha turned the penny into the moonlight, the fading 1938 barely visible. She tucked it back into his hand. "You keep it."

Clint threw it into the water, the soft plop it made loud and clear now that the wind left.

What's he getting at? She tugged him by the inside of his elbow. "Let's go."

A considerable amount of the cafés littering the rim of the park still had their lights on. They picked a random one and entered, sat at opposite ends of a bistro table parked against the far wall. A sweet, buttery smell about the place. Soft, elevator music played on the speakers by the cashier.

Clint went up and bought them both coffee and muffins. Once he passed the mug to Natasha and the fragrant steam hit her nose, she wanted to do nothing else—talking included—but drink.

Clint had other ideas. After he finished his muffin in a few bites, he put his elbows onto the table and clasped his hands, giving her an expectant look.

"Not here," Natasha muttered, motioning to the customers at the other end of the café.

"We're not always going to have time for this. You're going to hold it off once we're back in the field."

"We have a month," she bargained. "You and your injuries will—"

"Nat, I'm serious. I think you know that."

"It's not something I can talk about over coffee and cakes. I think you know that too."

"What happened in that assignment for Hill?"

"Nothing—"

"Stop lying."

The old man in the corner with the newspaper lumbered out, and a teenage girl from behind the counter wiped his table and took away his empty plate and cup. She said something to the remaining two women a few tables away and they started to pack their handbags. Clint nodded when the girl turned towards their table. She looked relieved, smiled, then carried on wiping tables.

Clint drained the rest of his coffee and took the rest of Natasha's muffin off her hand. Might as well, he needed to eat more than she did. She felt like throwing up.

"Let's go," he said, and got up.

When they went outside and was about to head for the subway station, a car stopped right beside them on the road. One look at the driver, and Natasha rolled her eyes.

"Phil?" Clint's hand dropped from around her waist.

"Get in the car," Coulson snapped.

"We were just—"

"Save it, Barton."

They piled into the backseat. Once the car started up Coulson unleashed his interrogation. "Who's idea was this?"

"Mine," Clint said.

"What the hell were you thinking? I do have my limits, Barton. I worried about you bouncing around the grounds, not—hey, are you even listening?" Coulson turned around.

"Eyes on the road, Phil."

"You need to learn to appreciate the degree of freedom I give you, not abuse it. One more time, and your clearance goes away."

Clint reached for a beat-up yellowed box resting on the cup holder. He shook out the contents and dealt the cards into four piles on his lap. "You wanna call up Fury? We should play a round. Too bad there's like... twelve of them."

Coulson looked back again. "Put those away."

"I want **you** to buy war bonds now." Clint read off the last card in his hand, mockingly deepening the bolded word.

"Barton."

He wiped his nose on his sleeve, collected the cards, and tossed them to Coulson, who stowed them away like artifacts inside his pocket. "I can't remember the last time you caught a cold." Coulson tossed a box of Kleenex to Clint. "And Romanoff, don't think you're invisible. I'm almost through with Barton."


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS IMPORTANT: Returning readers, read this last chapter first! It's different material :) (I fused 2 chapters together so when I updated the new stuff last time, no one knew b/c it went through as an updated instead of a new chapter.

_Next morning._

Natasha wasn't used to being spotted in public.

She kept her eyes on her phone and tucked a stray strand of red under the privacy of her hoodie. The steaming cup she glued to her lips, shielding as much of her face as possible.

The woman across from her didn't push. She had eyes on a newspaper she grabbed from the front rack the moment she clicked her six-inch heels into the café, and shed her bags at Natasha's table before getting in line to order. Neither spoke as they busied themselves with their own tasks.

Natasha sent Clint a picture of the woman. She'd ran out of things to do on her phone.

He replied immediately:

_Other one is here. talking w/ Coulson._

Natasha frowned. What did Stark want?

The woman finished flipping through her paper and refolded it. A slight smile twitched on her face before she spoke.

"Natalie Rushman. Long time no see, Natalie Rushman."

Natasha's own lips quivered on the cup. "Any appointments I should know of this week, Ms. Potts?"

Pepper's smile widened. "Oh, you duplicitous thing." She clapped her paper on the space between them good-naturedly and leaned forward. "Off work? Or are you under another cover?"

Natasha shook her head

"Anything planned for the day?"

She shook her head again. She hadn't anything in mind other than to get breakfast for Clint to save him the suffering of another day's protein-enriched mush, since Coulson had put him under house arrest since the matter yesterday.

"Oh, well I'm just buying some necessities while Tony's at S.H.I.E.L.D." Pepper paused, observing Natasha's wandering look, and decided she needed a push. "Care to join me?" she added.

Her request was friendly, but its underlying command stuck out like a knife to the guts. Pepper Potts didn't care who you were. She'd be good in S.H.I.E.L.D.

Natasha agreed just for the hell of it.

Hogan's eyeballs slunk behind his lids when Natasha swept into the backseat of his car. He turned his gaze away quick, but she could still see him squinting at her through the rear view mirror. He knew better than to gawk now.

They didn't talk much in the car, and the silence became prominent when Pepper asked to turn off the radio. Without much sense in that big head of his, Hogan dared to poke at the tension when they stopped at a particularly long red light.

"Who's your company, Ms. Potts?"

"I'd like you to meet Ms. Natasha Romanoff,  _Happy._ " Pepper's cheery tone betrayed the stern look she gave him through the mirror.

That shut him up.

Pepper switched to business mode once they stepped through the supermarket doors. Boxes of snickers and coke tumbled into the cart with a thud. Natasha'd never taken note of Stark's diet before, but this turned out to be something she expected from him. The junk backed the pitiful amount of fruits, vitamins, and granola bars to a corner, flanked by a growing number of instant meals that Pepper tossed in next.

"He's always hungry, and I don't have time to make anything. I told him to hire a cook or order delivery but he'd rather eat this junk all day," she explained for Natasha, looking embarrassed.

"I thought he should be the busy one." Didn't Stark say he'd be the one to take care of the reparations and every other mess he brought upon his industries?

"Oh, he is. He's really trying." Pepper filled in, quick to defend. "He's handling things well, and the tower's coming along faster, but I still have to take them into my own hands now and then. He's... rash."

Guaranteed Stark behavior, but what more could they want? Stark taking responsibility. Stark mending what he broke. Sure, Pepper could be bluffing, but the pride she radiated glowed genuine to Natasha's trained eyes. Tony's change somehow made her even more wary about seeing him again.

"So, how have you been? I'm sorry for not asking earlier." Pepper changed the subject.

"Fine."

"How often are your assignments? I wouldn't mind switching, you make it seem like such a leisurely job."

Gunfire and adrenaline-powered heartbeats echoed in her ears, and Natasha restrained from a retort. "A lot more fast-paced than it's been," she replied instead.

"Oh? Why?"

"My partner's injured."

Stark called then. Pepper answered her phone, nodded along, then handed the device to Natasha. "For you," she said.

"Watch Barton for me," Coulson's voice sounded the moment Natasha put the phone to her ear: an eerie knack he honed to its finest.

"I'm surprised you still trust me with him."

"I don't. I've got plenty to do and no one else wants to keep an eye out."

"How is he?" The guilt settled in.

"Didn't break into a run. Yet. Just don't let him get out again, please, at least for today."

"You can hold out a bit longer."

"Romanoff, I know you're avoiding Stark, and you're completely capable of doing so anywhere."

Of course, Coulson was right.

* * *

Clint was on his phone when Natasha returned to his room (Medical had kicked him out, not wanting to take responsibility for his wandering). At her entrance he tossed the phone into the sheets. "You didn't buy me anything?"

"Nope." She shook off her jacket and tossed it onto the end of the bed. " _I_ had a good breakfast.  _You're_ going to the cafeteria later."

"And you're coming with me." Clint grabbed her hand when she approached.

Natasha sat down beside him. Upon second thought she lay down, rested her head in his lap, and took a look to make sure she had locked the door.

"Clint, did Coulson mention anything about Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S to you?"

"No." His fingers skimmed the rim of her ear, then went into her hair. "What's going on, Nat?"

"No, no. I... met an agent there, and she kinda hinted at something that I think S.H.I.E.L.D's hiding. This project doesn't feel like just a simple collaboration with NASA."

"You're certain?"

"More than certain. Coulson acted weird, too. That's why I asked you. I thought maybe he'd have told you."

Clint untwisted the strap on her tank top and smoothed out the creases in the fabric, and she felt her skin began to heat. "Why? We have the same clearance level," he said.

"My background tends to attract prejudice and ostracization from anything top-secret, if you need a reminder."

"That's what you think, Natasha?" His palm cupped and squeezed the curve of her shoulder lightly. "That's what's bothering you?"

"It makes sense."

"They have clearance levels and they stick to it. If Coulson won't tell you, he won't tell me. S.H.I.E.L.D isn't about personal feelings."

"Uh-huh." She purposely rubbed her cheek against his hand on her shoulder.

Clint pulled her closer with a hand on her back, until her nose bumped into his scent-laced shirt, and the arm under her body began to cramp from her awkward position. All he did with that gesture enforced her point. His judgement wouldn't make a complete match with another agent's. This wasn't an agency of robots. Below the protocols and the clearance levels everyone still had their own brains, their own  _personal feelings_ that would never bring her the warm, weightless sensation cradling her now. It would never feel this good.

"When'd you start thinking this stuff? Clint asked. "Was it because of the Expo? Or that entire assignment?"

Natasha twisted his shirtfront with a finger, studying the creases she made.

"Natasha."

" _You_  try forgetting a part of your life, and then having it slap you in the face," she mumbled.

Out of words, he kissed the top of her arm and trailed his lips up to her shoulder. She tried to hold in a shiver. His breath drew its heat over her skin, until she couldn't stand it anymore and she pushed herself up, the abruptness of her movement almost knocking their noses together. Clint held still.

The phone on his table rang.

His hand hooked around her waist. "S' just Coulson," he whispered.

Natasha pushed him away. "Go get it." She kept the disappointment out of her voice. "You don't want to piss him off any further."

Clint answered the call with an exaggerated sigh, then stuffed his phone back into his jeans. From the back of a chair he shook loose a rumpled jacket and roughly yanked it on, hiding a wince. "His office. Now. What a killjoy."

"Is this about yesterday?" She swung her legs over the side of the mattress.

"No. I don't know what the hell he wants."

On the way to Coulson's Natasha kept replaying in her head what had just happened. Perhaps missing that call wouldn't have been that bad.

Once seated in the office, Coulson slid a folder across. "I need to you to bring someone in."

"Another escort mission?" Natasha rested her chin on her palm, her other hand flipping through the papers inside.

"It's important, and the only thing available if Barton wants to butt in."

Clint pretended to not notice and continued doodling on a post-it.

Natasha glanced through the overview of the mission and narrowed her eyes. "More scientists. What's S.H.I.E.L.D pulling?"

"Look, we need the guy to come in as soon as possible. Sometime within the next two days would be great, but really, this shouldn't take more than twenty-four hours."

Natasha scoured through the papers, but they mentioned no background information whatsoever; nothing like the novel-length briefs Coulson usually doled out like a paper boy.

"Cytologist Andrew Sheerin, covert S.H.I.E.L.D asset," she read out loud. "Last known address: Dave's Grocery and Liquor, Oakland, California. This is all you're giving me?"

"The rest is discreet information," Coulson said.

"Anything S.H.I.E.L.D does is discreet."

He leaned back on his chair and clasped his hands. "Is there something I should know about, Romanoff?"

Under the table, Clint nudged her with his foot. Natasha scooted her chair away from him. "If you don't want to reveal anything, Coulson, fine." She gathered the papers and stuffed it into the folder.

"It's us, Phil. Don't we deserve to know?" Clint said, helping her with the papers.

Coulson watched them in silence.

Then his composure dropped like heavy satin.

"We found Rogers."

Coulson tried to hide his smile under a flurry of hands adjusting card holders and snow globes.

"You leave at 7:30 tomorrow. Be here early."


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit. Forgot to update. Update speed should pick up again now that I'm off my summer camp. The original chapter for this was over 3500 words but I managed to edit enough to chop it to 1900.

"I told you Coulson was hiding something." Natasha huffed in between kicks at a sparring dummy. It was exhilarating to feel the sure strength in her limbs; simpler, automatic, and released some of the clutter in her head, a problem she never had before yet has been troubling her in full force lately.

"Yeah? Well he didn't tell me either, if that makes you feel better," Clint said, wiping his bow with a rag. "Proved my point. When'd you say he started acting weird?"

"Sometime after dropping Selvig off," Natasha answered. "He told me to wait for him outside while he met up with someone. Then he came back with that stupid grin."

"No wonder he's been so... flexible. Think about it, though. Captain America. Dude's still _alive._ "

"Super Soldier Serum," she said bluntly.

" _Wow,"_ he made a mocking, surprised face. "How did you know _that?_ "

Natasha ignored him, ceased her session with the dummy and moved on. Unstrapping five or six knives from a black case, she weighed them in her hand. They didn't agree with her. Their shine was dull and their handles didn't yield with use. Her own knives wouldv'e felt a world different. Should she get her field set? No, it'd be a hassle.

"Well, either way, I'm not excited about his fawning." Clint blew on his bow to rid it of whatever dust he claimed had accumulated. With his constant care, Natasha doubted there'd ever be any dust. But she knew watching her and not being able to practice drove him mad, and interacting with his weapons pacified his sullen mood somewhat.

"Shut up, you wouldn't be let out early if not for him." She continued to study the S.H.I.E.L.D knives, and made her way towards her locker.

Clint dodged her comment. "Do you think we'd get to meet Rogers?"

"You don't even know what they're doing with him, Clint. You're turning into Coulson."

"I'm just interested. How are you _not_ interested?"

"There're stranger things in the world." Natasha cracked the lid of her velvet box and peeked in. The steel inside caught light and glinted too-brightly into her eyes. She snapped the clasp back and pulled it out of her locker in one abrupt motion. "Sharpen these," she commanded, setting the box next to Clint.

"These don't need to be sharp." He looked at it, then at her, his hands unmoving from the grip of his bow.

"The tips," she corrected. "Just the tips. They're kind of blunt."

Her excuse was no better than Clint's obsessive bow-cleaning.

His gaze settled on the regulation knives she clutched instead of her own. A sudden shift in choice of weaponry, almost nonexistent of her. Natasha spotted the impending question on his face and blocked him before he could say anything. "Don't ask me why. I honestly don't know." And she didn't. She also didn't know why she brought them out for him at all. "You look like you need something to do."

Clint reached for the box to settle onto his lap. He opened it slowly, like he anticipated something out of the norm. There was none; not to his eyes. He would never feel the hostility there the way she did.

He ran a finger down the length of a small blade before gingerly lifting it from the casing. "Tips are blunt," he muttered. "Tips are blunt."

The soft grinding of metal on stone followed nonetheless as she whipped the knife in her hand towards a target.

* * *

The next morning, as Coulson had said, a jet flew them over to Oakland, where it dropped them off north of the grocery store their target scientist was at. After a two-mile walk they arrived. An electric doorbell went off the moment they stepped in. Clint's eyes shot to the treacherous device overhead. Behind him, Natasha tapped a foot on the doormat impatiently and waited for him to get in. She flicked the thick envelope in her hand at him to usher him on.

The man by the counter looked about fifty, with a thick hair of black and a belly that pulled taut his shirt. He lounged on a plastic chair with his feet up on the cash register. As Natasha approached, she saw that the man was cutting his fingernails.

"Dr. Sheerin," Natasha addressed him.

Sheerin lifted his face up to her, dazed.

"S.H.I.E.L.D, hi." He tossed the nail clipper he had been using into a box with a sticker labeled "$2."

Natasha nodded, suppressing a disgusted twitch of her mouth, and handed the envelope over. "This should explain everything."

Sheerin tore into it like he's unpackaging goods for the store shelves. He pulled a hand-written note from the top of the stack and held it with an outreached hand, squinting. "Huh." He smiled.

Natasha shifted and glanced around their surroundings, waiting for him to finish.

"You're Coulson's kids, eh? Well this is exciting. They haven't called me in for years." Sheerin laughed to himself and cramped the note back in with the others. "I'll come, I'll come. I don't think I have an option." He brushed past the dusty curtains behind him into a hidden doorway, and snorted when the two agents tailed him like puppies. "You're tending the store for me while I pack my equipment."

"I'm afraid we cannot do that," Natasha said.

"Why ever not? I can't leave the place unattended."

"We are not here to be cashiers."

"I don't want to argue, miss. If you'd just help out a little we can leave sooner."

Clint stepped forward to pull her away. "Tasha," he murmured, and shook his head. "Leave it."

She didn't look at him, instead gave Sheerin a long, cold stare before whipping around, her hair like flying streamers, and sat down on his plastic chair, deliberately bringing her legs up to clatter against the cash register the way Sheerin did earlier. "Thirty minutes," she ordered him.

"An hour," Sheerin dealt back.

Natasha shifted her feet to directly on top of the keyboard.

"I don't like this. I want a regular cover job," she muttered once Sheerin left, and tapped the glass tabletop with the tips of her fingers.

"My fault, alright? We'll be back to normal soon enough."

The infuriating ring of the doorbell alerted them of a customer. Natasha glanced towards the stacks of beer by the entrance. A small, ratty brown head bobbed up and down, pass the beer, the adjacent fruit racks, and into the pasta-cereal-condiments-baking aisle, serenaded by the pattering of quick feet on cheap plastic tiles. Rustling. Pattering. More rustling. A fridge opened and closed. A slower, softer patter towards them, now from the other side of the store. Marker-stained hands surfaced and settled a grocery basket onto the table.

"Who are you?" The boy stared.

"I work here," Clint answered.

"Where's Mr. Dave?"

"He's... out." He plucked a package of macaroni from the basket and rang it up.

"Oh."

"Yeah." He reached for the bottles of chocolate milk.

The boy flailed a hand at the cardboard box of candies next to Natasha. "Gimme that."

She tipped the box over for him and the boy picked out all the chocolates to stuff into his pocket. Maybe Sheerin left them out especially for him. Maybe.

"Are you out alone, kid?" Clint rang up the fruit loops and cheerios next, then a bag of chips.

"Yeah."

There was a piece of paper with a shopping list and drawings all over on the bottom of the basket. Clint handed it to the boy, who stuffed that into his pocket too.

"That'd be $22.48, please."

The boy dug around his pants and put a wad of dollar bills on the counter. Natasha counted them. $15. "I'm sorry, that's not enough." She handed the cash back.

"Oh."

Natasha held out a hand, in which he placed his grocery list, and she jotted down a message on the amount he owed. "We'll keep your things safe here, honey. Show this to your mom or dad and you can come back and pay us then." She slipped the list into his bulging pocket for him and smiled.

The boy grinned and took off.

"Well," Clint said. "Looks like you manage fine with everything... as usual."

Natasha laughed. "Go talk to Sheerin or something. Get some info out of him."

" _You_ can't even stand talking to him," he countered. "And we're s'pposed to stay up here."

"Well then go help him pack. We don't need two people at one cash register." Turning her head to the door at the sound of the doorbell again, she added, "Unless you want to work with these fellas."

A loud mother with two kids lumbered in, with a snarky old lady hobbling behind them, looking around with a pout and snapping back and forth with the other woman.

Clint slid off his chair and fled through the curtained doorway.

Natasha bent over the counter top for a box of mints from the shelf below. She rested her chin on her palm and blankly stared ahead at the aisles. The odd company of four came to the register, arguing still about some dental appointment, and Natasha quickly rang up their groceries and sent them on their way. The little noy hadn't returned yet, and Clint was still downstairs. Maybe she shouldn't have made him leave.

A crawling feeling crept on her neck and the muscles there tightened. Natasha swiveled her chair around to get a better view of the entrance. The way the checkout was located blocked it completely unless you stretched your neck out and around. She sucked harder on a mint and crunched it between her teeth.

Silence. But not the good kind. Natasha skimmed her hand over the outline of the gun at her hip.

A figure emerged from the furthest, darkest left aisle and strode towards her.

She didn't remember hearing the doorbell.

As the silhouette advanced Natasha caught a glint of silver where its hands should be. Her eyes snapped up to the aisle sign. Pets and Gardening.

Coming into the sunlight, the imaged woman raked her fingers over a steel dog collar like prayer beads.

"C'mon, guess," she said, smiling.

Natasha was wordless.

The woman laughed. "And to think you once told us apart from the sound of our footsteps. Disappointing, Natalia. Disappointing."


End file.
